For Dan Cumberland, a breakfast in Chicago turned into a life-changing experience.
It was over breakfast in a cafe in downtown Chicago that I first heard a phrase that would redefine how I thought about my work.
I was at a crossroads in my life, wondering what to do next and searching for wisdom. I had met up with a college professor, who I hadn’t seen in quite a few years. After some small talk I began explaining how lost I felt. I explained that things didn’t feel like they were working and I felt just plain stuck. The conversation slowed to match my feelings of stuck-ness, and I played with the remnants of my eggs and hash browns. I knew that there wasn’t an easy answer to the questions I so badly wanted to answer about life, work, meaning, and identity. But I really wanted something to ease the tension.
My professor smiled and said, “Dan, artists have to make their own way.”
I didn’t realize at the time how powerful those words are. He simultaneously affirmed a large part of my identity (calling me an “artist”), and invited me to reimagine what career and work might look like for me. He was giving me permission to question what I thought work was “supposed” to look like and to begin finding and defining it for myself— making my own way. Though there may be a set path, it may not be my path.
Since that conversation, I’ve had hundreds (if not thousands!) of conversations with others who are in a similar place to where I was then. Every time, I become more and more convinced that in today’s world, you need to have the permission to question what you “should” do and the freedom to make your own way.
Everyone has a story about work and career that guides us. It’s the story we tell ourselves about how things are “supposed to” be. It’s what defines how we think about success, failure, and what kind of things we should not pursue. These stories shape our hopes and expectations for what we do with our lives. When our experience aligns with that story, we don’t ask any questions. Why would we? Things are going well. We’re on-track.
It’s when our experiences diverge with that story that we begin to wonder what happened, what is wrong with us, and how to find our own way. Which is exactly what happened for me. I did what I thought I was supposed to do. I chose a college and major to study that seemed like a good fit— my family and the community I came from were all supportive. I finished college and got a good job in the field. Everything seems to be proceeding as well as I could hope.
But it didn’t take long for all of that to change.
Within a few month of starting that job, I felt discouraged. I was working hard and doing good work, but it felt empty. I tried harder, worked longer, and only found myself growing more disillusioned. Those negative feelings grew into depression, and the depression grew into regular breakdowns. I was doing everything right by most measures, but it wasn’t working for me. Something needed to give, which is what brought me to that cafe in Chicago early one spring morning. When he invited me to make my own way, he was inviting me to depart from the way that I had been attempting to follow.
Since then, I’ve realized how much the path I was on was mostly about what I felt like I was supposed to do and not about who I was and what I wanted to create in my work and life. It was a path informed by countless places in more formative years: family, friends, community, faith community, and on and on. It was a possible path. But it was not my path.
Maybe you’ve been in a similar place. Maybe your chosen field didn’t fit as well as you hoped. Maybe you always thought you were going to be X and it turns out that you won’t be able to. Maybe you were doing one thing in order to raise a family and now you’re left wondering what to do. Whatever brought you to this place, it’s a place that many of us have been, and yet not a place we would have chosen to visit.
What I’ve learned is that when when you arrive at one of these junctures, it’s important to stop, take a breath, and think about what stories and assumptions are guiding you before you take the next step. What are the stories about what you’re “supposed” to do with your life? Where did they come from? What people, institutions, and ideologies shaped your expectations for your work and life? And are those the voices that you want to have the power over you as you find your way into what comes next?
Typically these questions are left unanswered and we push forward, guided by the anxiety of being “lost” or “stuck” rather than calling into question how we’re thinking about the source of the anxiety or the path that we’re expecting to find. The linear path that was considered “normal” 20 or 30 years ago no longer exists. What has taken its place is the opportunity to explore the intersection of work as an expression of who you are.
Today you have the opportunity to make your own way. In fact, you must. And you will.
Photo: Phillip Pessar/Flickr
The linear path never existed Dan. It was another illusion we collectively bought into until THEY changed the rules and we understood. What THEY didn’t expect that in a lot of ways THEY freed us from our dream and this became another fork in the road that will make things different than they and we thought possible. Not a bad but it will be different
You’re right, Mark. We must make our own way. Here’s to charting a bold course!