I have no idea what I want.
I am admitting this to myself for the first time in my life.
I am unhinged. I feel utterly unstuck from the foundation I thought I had been carefully building these last 26 years. But, as it turns out, I was building a foundation for a life that was not really mine. I had curated, in my mind, a version of myself that I thought I could be. It was a version of myself that I actually could have been… if I had really wanted it.
I have started to realize that an individual with many talents (most people have many talents) could probably turn themselves into a version of themselves that focused on any one of those talents if they tried hard enough. But forcing oneself into a career simply because you are talented is different than realizing one’s full potential. Isn’t it? Following a path because you know the way is not the same as going the right way. So how do I know what is the right way? I don’t.
I have have also come to realize that not all wants are created equal. I want ice cream. I want a cat. I want to go scuba diving. I want to sing back up for Beyonce. But my worldview is not shaped in anyway real way by those desires. The notion that scuba diving would be fun does not inform me on my calling or purpose in the world. What do I really want? What do I want my life to mean? How can I best contribute in a meaningful and lasting way? What to I care about? What do I most care about?
I think that last one is the key. In the same way that I want many things, I also care about many things. But the quality I have come to most admire in the people I want to emulate is a fire that I seem to be lacking. For a long time I was worried that I am just not a person with fire. I can hear the people who know and love me laugh at that notion. The problem is not that I lack fire. The problem is that fire comes from caring. And I haven't found my caring focus.
I am discovering that thing I thought I cared most about is not what I really care most about. At least not in the application I had been a part of. I picked a field because I was talented and thought it would make me more interesting. But in the field I chose, a key component of success is an unequivocal and unrelenting motivation to dedicate yourself 100% to it. And to do that you better fucking care. And I do. But really I don’t.
So now what? I am left at square 1 with no experience in any of the other things I am good at. I am saddled with debt for insisting to pursue the first thing I was good at. And I am paralyzed with fear that I will, yet again, set off down a road that does not lead to my vocational success and fulfillment. I’m good at a lot of things! How do I separate hobby from purpose? If I can’t at this moment articulate what it is I truly care about, will I ever?
I have to believe the answer to that question is yes. I also have to believe that by simply wanting to care about something so deeply that I can affect change I will eventually manifest the passion I seem to lack. This uncertainty is, I suppose, a gift. At the risk of sounding trite, I will try to lean in to my own self-doubt, with the hope that I will eventually gain clarity.