Deciding your life and career path is not always easy.

In some families, the parents will push their children to follow a certain path for their career. They will push them to become doctors, lawyers or engineers - a job that will pay well and get them a decent life. This is more often the case in Eastern cultures, not as much over here, but it does happen.

A lot of times the children will want to please their parents and just follow along even if it wasn't the field they were interested in. It can be a good or bad thing depending on how you look at it. It could end up not being good if they don't do well in school or have to work a job they don't enjoy. But on the same token, if the choice was left to them, they may choose a field of interest that doesn't get them a good job and end up living unhappily because their job doesn't pay well and their life is difficult. Or choose an easy route, like not going to college which will most likely end up making their life difficult in the future. This highlights the complexity of such decisions. A person's outlook on the situation makes the difference between being happy or miserable.

My family, a mix of Eastern and Western backgrounds, decided to leave me to choose my career path and when I wanted to go to college. While I appreciated that at first, I often wish they hadn't left it up to me. I wish they had pushed me from the start. It seems we always want something different than what we have. No one can be satisfied with what they've got, it seems.

Children whose families push them to follow a certain path, often wish they had it the way I did. But many come to the conclusion later that they needed that push to motivate them to be the best they could. So, it ended up to be a good thing after all.

I think human nature is more prone to being ungrateful. We are always good at finding reasons to be disappointed or unhappy, it seems. But we must dig deeper if we want to find the positives in our lives.

I think we will all be happier if we accept and appreciate what we have, instead of wishing for what we don't.