{A Personal Crossroads}[10th February 1969]

[Redbook1:74-75][19690210:1400]{A Personal Crossroads}[10th February 1969][Age 17]

Monday 10th February 1969.

2.00 p.m.

            I and at or approaching a crossroads larger than usual, though life is full of decisions.  This one is over my career.

            An academic life is out.  I feel constricted between the walls of dry scholarship already, so to make it my career would be unwise.  I should be so overcome by a sense of my own futility that I would not be able to put into my work the interest that would be necessary even for, say, teaching railway history, were such a subject available.  The only reason I want to go to Cambridge -- which desire may seem to contradict what I have said above -- is because this is still part of education, not career.  I want to learn how to think -- D suggested that, but it seems a very good reason (on thinking it over?!).

            I could go into private enterprise -- industry and commerce -- where I think that, once my interest was aroused, I have the makings of a first-class "businessman", if there is such a thing, of the old school; whether I could cope effectively with the modern techniques I am not certain, but I think I could use them effectively.  I am heartened by being told by Mr. A, head of the Business Studies dept.,  that what the next generation of businessmen will most want is creativity.  That's me -- I hope and think.

            I could join British Railways, where my heart lies, and work my way to the top.  The money would be less, the prestige would be less, but responsibility would be greater, though the job itself would be safe if one got "in" with the Minister of Transport.  On the other hand, I may be too interested to serve effectively in a physically contacting railway system -- I would tend to become depressed by the signs of such physical contraction, whatever the balance-sheets say.

            Perhaps I should go off and work abroad, in a developing area where the railway system also may develop -- Central Africa, say, or the U.S.S.R..  The call of far places is strong, but my quite unrealistic and idiotic love for Britain and its peoples is stronger still.

            Should I become a politician?  I have the makings of a statesman, I sometimes think, and I am certain that my understanding of people is good.  I am also a bit of a visionary.  Yet could I stand the idea of having my people throw me out of office, because they could not see things as I do, or because I was a bad mass media personality?  Successful politicians must needs be detached enough to endure the cutting-off of their work at the whim of the electorate; could I be so detached?

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