Questioner: Choosing a career is an apt question since all my life people have been asking me, "What are you going to do when you grow up?" And now that I've reached college the question has quite a bite. Wouldn't you say that the choice of career is pretty much a matter of luck or chance?

Speaker: It seems to be that to many people, but let me ask you a question. Would you regard building a bridge or writing a book or launching a rocket—the results of choosing a career—a matter of luck or chance?

Questioner: Certainly not.

Speaker: Why then do you suppose people regard the choice of a career itself, which is just as fundamental as writing a book or designing a bridge, as a matter of chance, since we don't expect these other things to be matters of chance?

Questioner: It's hard to tell what to use as a basis for making this decision. I'm in college now, and I really don't know where I'm headed. I'd like to know, but I don't have any guidelines.

Speaker: I'm interested in a word you used. You said we have to find a basis for guidance in choosing a career. We're especially interested in that in Christian Science when we talk about a career or guidance, because there is need of finding a basis for guidance. We would say that our outlook on choosing a career is tied very closely to how we view man.

If we regard man as simply a pawn—sort of an accident of fate—then there certainly isn't much basis for an orderly working out of a career. But the Bible gives an entirely different concept of man. Throughout the Bible man is revealed as the expression of God, as living to bear witness to God.

Questioner: How will this regard for man aid me in choosing my career?

Speaker: What do you feel you most need to know in order to select a career?

Questioner: I'd like to know what I'm most perfectly suited for.

Speaker: Which is really another way of saying that you really would like to know more about yourself. I think in this whole area of guidance—and I've seen this with Sunday School pupils and with my own children—that it's tempting sometimes to want to be able to press a button and get a single answer to choosing a career. But what we're talking about here in knowing ourselves better means getting down to the root of how we view ourselves. And if we do that, we'll not only have a better idea of what kind of career we want but it will help us know what kind of a home we want to establish, what we want our life to really be.

In Christian Science we would approach this question of gaining a sense of direction by going back to the very basis of our existence, which is God. We would turn to God, eternal Spirit, Mind, as our creator and guide, and we would look to God to reveal to us more of His own nature and more of our own nature as His expression.

Questioner: Do you feel that God is a part of man?

Speaker: We feel and believe that God is the creator of man, man's constant guide, and that we can no more be separated from God than we can be separated from existence. Referring to guidance specifically, we look to God for direction in our everyday living.

There's a verse in Psalms which I think is interesting for this very problem. In speaking of God it says (32:8), "I will instruct thee and teach thee in the way which thou shalt go: I will guide thee with mine eye."

Questioner: What do you use as a channel between God and yourself?

Speaker: What do you think would be a channel?

Questioner: Praying, I imagine.

Speaker: And where does prayer take place?

Questioner: Mostly in a church?

Speaker: But in your own experience where does prayer take place? In thought. While church is identified with prayer, it's a good idea to carry around with us. I mean church is more than simply a physical structure. Really what we need throughout the day and throughout our lives is a living and active sense of being held in the presence of God.

Questioner: I think I can relate this to my own life. Prior to going to college I decided to work for a while. I was loading trucks. I Knew that I was in the wrong slot. At this point I decided that I should return to school and widen my horizons, and now I feel that I'm more in place.

Speaker: What you call widening your horizons is really what we're talking about here, except that it isn't just a matter of human optimism or an attempt to manipulate things in a willful way. Our horizons are widened when we identify ourselves with that which is infinite, namely, God, rather than thinking that our future depends on whom we know in a certain business or what few careers we may be aware of at the present time. In other words, aligning ourselves with God, with infinite Mind, stretches our concept of everything about us.

In "Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures" Mary Baker Eddy says (p. 506), "Spirit, God, gathers unformed thoughts into their proper channels, and unfolds these thoughts, even as He opens the petals of a holy purpose in order that the purpose may appear." Now, this unfolding of ideas doesn't come all in one swoop.

Questioner" Would you say that the unfolding of the petals could be considered parallel to choosing a career?

Speaker: In a sense. The opening of petals in a flower begins to give the flower identity and distinctiveness. And in our experience, as we yield our thought to God's guidance, we begin to see more of that which gives us a distinctive place.

For example, I know someone who when halfway through junior high school had absolutely no sense of any kind of a career. But he was learning more about God and man in the Christian Science Sunday School. Gradually he became interested in certain hobbies. He began to learn about electricity and shortwave radio, then his interest turned to cartooning, then to writing, then to journalism, and then back to art again. For a while he was interested in teaching, and then after college and after the service he found himself on a newspaper. These interests and activities kept unfolding so that eventually he found himself in a kind of work where his varied background, in the most unexpected ways, prepared him for what he was called upon to do.

Questioner: Well, how could he know that he was headed in the right direction?

Speaker: He wasn't aiming toward one particular final destination. He was simply seeking at every given moment to express just as much as he understood of the nature of God and man.

Questioner: So you mean that once we get on the track we'll roll along smoothly.

Speaker: Yes, it is a matter of getting on the track. That's a very good expression, for what we're talking about isn't a one-shot answer to guidance. We're talking about bringing our lives into conformity with God, bringing every aspect of our thought, motives, and purposes into closer alignment with God so that more of God is expressed through us. Guidance comes as we align ourselves more closely to God and let His will be done rather than our own personal sense of things.