“The most vexing part of having to cobble together a life without a clear direction is that this nagging feeling is still there.”
Recently, I was chatting over Instant Messenger with a friend who complained of being doomed to a career in retail hell, despite having a degree in nursing. In my rush to empathize, I made a cringe-worthy metaphor about life as an ocean and divining direction by the stars, and I winced soon as I sent it. “One must navigate across a vast ocean toward a vague direction, pinning hopes upon possibly obscured stars that are or are not what we’re supposed to follow” was the basic outline of my flowery and totally useless advice. Ashamed of my linguistic crime, I decided to curl up on the couch and perhaps doze off.
Seven or so hours later, I awoke, unhinged by what I had said. Not only was I still livid with myself for making a mockery of the English language, but I also had realized that perhaps my hackneyed advice was somewhat sage—and that it applied to me more than my friend. It troubled me greatly, but I tried to ignore my thoughts. Two hastily chugged cups of coffee later, the familiar and bitter feeling of being adrift burst through my defenses when I discovered to my horror that there was no water in the tap. I was now deprived of my shower—my sanctuary—the place where I go to do my daily spiritual exercises and cleanse myself of the stench of the prior day’s self-doubt. Panic.
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Like me, you don’t know what you’re doing. Don’t worry—you’re certainly not alone in this, and it is perfectly acceptable to embrace uncertainty. To make you feel better about yourself, I offer my own meandering course through life as an example. I think I wanted to become an architect first. I meticulously designed a house on loose leaf paper borrowed from my grandmother’s supply bunker, crookedly drawing bricks and support beams for a house that looked strangely akin to the vast identical tracts one finds at Levittown or any other post-war suburban development. From there, I graduated and set out on a political pipe dream that degraded with each passing year—first, the presidency; then Senator; and finally, in a Machiavelli-induced fit of cynical hope, the power behind the throne.
There were other dashed hopes as well—baseball player; spy; firefighter; astronaut; hedge fund manager. There may have been a security guard aspiration as well. It happens. The moment when the realization occurs (“Oh my, I don’t think I can stay awake through another lab”) is a spiritual cleansing of sorts, though how one reacts to it is a matter of individual prerogatives and environmental conditions. Burning school work on a grill, throwing a champagne party, sleeping for 27 hours, and embarking upon a (failed) crusade to make myself physically fit are just some of the reactions I’ve had to such crises of conviction.
Of course, this says nothing of non-career ambitions. Did you want the life of a player-pimp-international-man-of-mystery too? You have both my empathy and condolences. Perhaps Jennifer Garner’s character from Alias, Gloria Steinem’s actual life, or some other badass trajectory was what you were projecting for yourself? That’s still pretty sweet. Dreaming is what propels us forward. Embracing reality—embracing failure—does not signify the death of a dream, or even its deferment. Is your immediate response: “Oh, so my dream was stupid, then?” Take a deep breath, close your eyes, and take a trip to whatever part of your mind makes lemon spritzers from the barrel of lemons handed you. Maybe your dream was stupid. So what?
You may very well be one of the few people who have never failed and have gone through life unbowed by even the mere prospect of having to ball up and throw away your life plans in a fit. To you, I say this: you do not exist; stop deluding yourself. There are those of you, however, who have found the shiny, ephemeral (or perhaps very real) goal or cause to which you can dedicate the rest of your life. Perhaps you are dedicating yourself to educating women in Africa, or creating works of art that will inspire generations to come. Or, your holy grail is raising your children to become solid, successful human beings (I thank you). Maybe your passion is more prosaic, and all you want to do is acquire vast amounts of wealth. That’s awesome, too.
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I’d like to speak, however, to those of you who are 12, or 26, or 55, and don’t have that singular focus and have never found an adequate answer for that dreadful question: What do you want to be when you grow up? I despised that question at age five, couldn’t answer it at all at 15, left college despondent that I had a degree but no idea what to do with it, left the country, and returned as a grown person to find that question waiting for me, hands on hips, saying “Well? I’m still here. What are you going to do?” The most vexing part of having to cobble together a life without that clear sense of direction is that this nagging feeling is still there.
So, then, what does one do in such a situation? There is no clear answer. What is most important to recognize, however, is just this—there is no law or dictate about such matters, and that’s actually beneficial. To be sure, there are certain areas of life where absolutes are a must: don’t kill people; drinking spoiled milk is probably a bad idea; driving drunk is definitely a bad idea. Certainly there are things people must do, like eat and support themselves financially. Of course, the “musts” can consume everything else, so it’s not as if there is always a particularly deep well of time within which one can muse over aspirations.
Giving a Coke and a smile to the ambiguous nature of ambition and most of life is especially difficult for those who prefer clear answers. Acknowledging a lack of knowledge, however, is incredibly useful in coming to some semblance of an answer to whatever question is on the docket of life. It is a stubbornly human—and particularly male—trait to hide ignorance. After all, not knowing is embarrassing, and embarrassment possesses an underrated power over our ability to make clear decisions. Saying “I don’t know, teach me” is particularly difficult if one seeks clarity in wisdom—but it has to happen because the alternative—ignorance and deceit—is toxic to progress in life.
A disturbing amount of the wisdom I use everyday comes from my childhood cartoons. In Animaniacs, Yakko, Wakko, and Dot make the point far more succinctly than I ever could:
It’s a great big universe
And we’re all really puny
We’re just tiny little specks
About the size of Mickey Rooney.
It’s big and black and inky
And we are small and dinky
It’s a big universe and we’re not.
Leave it to a long-defunct cartoon (though not in my heart) to offer a sense of proper perspective. In the broader sense, we are all Mickey Rooney, earnestly smiling and buttressing ourselves against the demonic seeds of chaos sewn by doubt. It is a worthy metaphor to carry forward, even as I shudder to consider my 6’3” frame compressed into such a compact existence. Who knows? I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up, but perhaps it is for the best.
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This post is republished on Medium.
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Photo credit: iStock