What Should I Do With My Life?

This is the topic for a book... for many books, in fact - not just one blog post.  I'm only going to touch on the subject below.  It's been the question that has plagued me most of my existence.  Even at 34, this is a question that is at the forefront of my mind.  I know I am meant to do something... I just don't know precisely what it is.  This is a subject I suspect I will write about a lot over time.  But for today, I want to focus on two particular aspects of the question. The first was raised yesterday by Salon.com's advice columnist, Cary Tennis and the second was a page in Paulo Coelho's book Warrior of the Light.


The letter to Mr. Tennis asks the question, "How do I become an adult?" and is written by a 20-something dreamer who wonders if she "missed the memo on how to grow up."  She describes how her friends are all in graduate school, making lots of money or doing something good for the world.  She describes how she has a passion in life but has no clear path to follow it; how her job as an office assistant is tangentially related to that passion, but she has no real interest in the job.  She comments how she's a terrible assistant who daydreams all day and surfs the web doing very little work. 


Next, she talks about how she's suffered boughts of depression, been on and off medication for it, seen a therapist, tried yoga.  Then she wonders if she should "indulge the darkness"; try to understand it.  Finally, she says she feels ashamed because she could and should be contributing good things to the world but she's not.  She asks for advice.


The only way I knew for certain that I hadn't authored this letter is that she is currently working, while I am 10 days from giving birth, and she signed it The Maenad, and I had to look up what that is (a female follower of Dionysus, prone to mad debauchery).  


As I wrote yesterday, it seems I am physically - or, rather, emotionally - incapable of working at a job in which I do not believe.  Doesn't matter if the money's good or my boss is wonderful. When I am off my path - not, as Paulo Coelho describes in The Alchemist, following my personal legend, I become depressed.  


I, too, have envied friends who seemed to have their act together: friends who are making a lot of money or are doing something noble.  Unlike the Maenad, though, I have tried enough jobs to know, at least, that no matter how glamorous a job seems, unless it is what you are meant to do, no job is all that exciting day after day.  


I think the question the writer asks is the wrong question.  She wants to know how to become an adult.  I suspect she believes that "true adults" find their niche, accept their lot, take responsibility for themselves and go to work day after day to do their job to the best of their ability.  I don't think this woman actually needs to know how to be "an adult," whatever one's definition might be.  As I said, I'm 34 and about to become a mother.  I'm about as adult as you get.  That doesn't mean that I wouldn't feel exactly like she does if I were to go back to work in corporate communications.  I know that I would.


I think what the writer really wants to know is how can she discover and pursue her personal legend - her true path?  Doing so, i.e. finding a way to follow her passion in life, I think, might be the cure for her emotional state.  Whether or not it will make her feel like "an adult" I can't say, but I can say it is the way that she will feel truly alive.


Interestingly, in a way, this is the same advice Mr. Tennis (the advice columnist) gives to her as well.  He recommends she read a book he is currently reading, called Nature and the Human Soul, by Bill Plotkin.  Apparently Plotkin believes that the process of becoming a true adult is the process of knowing your place as an individual.  And by that, Tennis implies, he means understanding your soul.  


I will be writing a lot about different ways to find one's legend... mostly about my own journey, which has had many peaks and plateaus, along with some traipsing through the valley of despair.  


But to begin, I will just point to the passage I mentioned from Warrior of the Light.  Coelho writes that there are two ways to pray.  The first is for something specific that you want.  The second is for guidance in following the path the Creator has set for you.  The first way will leave you feeling like God does not answer your prayers.  The second will lead you along the path you must follow to reach your destiny. 


I've tried both ways.  I would add to Coelho's warning against praying for exactly what you want that sometimes you do, in fact, get it - only to discover it wasn't what you wanted in the first place.  I remember one particular point in life where I seemed to have a magic journal.  I would write in it what I wanted and my wish would be granted - but in a way reminiscent of the Brendon Fraser movie, "Bedazzled".  The devil offers to grant Faser's character Elliot seven wishes, but each has a catch.  For instance, Elliot wishes to be rich and married to the girl he loves, so the devil makes him a drug dealer in South America whose philandering wife hates him.  


I wrote in my journal that I wanted to meet a sensitive, thoughtful guy.  And I did... he ballroom danced and wrote me poems and was just toooooo much.  Next, I ordered a rich intellectual.  He came in the form of a gorgeous Russian entrepreneur who turned out to be a snob who was the last man ever to say to be that I was "too needy."  It was a criticism that had, at one time, been fair to make of me.  But at that stage in my life, I certainly didn't feel desperate about this guy.  I thought I'd acted (and been) entirely independent.  I was caught completely off-guard by what he thought was constructive criticism.  I never spoke to him again, but I also never again gave any man a reason to say that to me.  Maybe he did me a favor...  Maybe God was doing me a favor - but that wasn't the answer to the prayer I had been looking for.


In the end, I began to think about and focus on how I wanted someone to make me feel.  Nothing specific about the man (his career, his interests, his qualities); instead, I focused on how I wanted to feel when I was with the person: secure, amused, comfortable being myself.  I wanted someone who enjoyed doing the same things I do; someone with whom I didn't have to put on an act; someone I could trust to do what he said he was going to do when he said he'd do it.  The superficial qualities  - where he went to school, what he did for a living, how much money he had - none of that mattered.


And going back to the question of what one should do with one's life and how to find one's personal legend, I can easily apply Coelho's teaching.  For example, rather than praying to God to help me get my book published, I will just pray that I can be an instrument of his work and ask him to lead me to the right path to fulfill my destiny.


I'll save for a future post my whole concept of god, to whom I'm actually praying and for what...