I was always sure that you just needed to find one thing you love doing and specialize in it.
My husband, for example, when he was all of five, was already asking his dad to buy him a book on the programming language Pascal. Thirty years later, he’s still programming and still loves it. I wanted that too and tried hard to find that one thing for myself. Spoiler: I still haven’t.
I remember how I couldn’t decide what major to choose after school. I liked a lot of subjects; I wasn’t purely a humanities person or a techie, but I had to choose something. I chose economics, and I don’t regret it — I enjoyed my studies. But at a certain point, I also became interested in languages. Over time, I switched between a lot of different career paths: finance, analytics, translation, and UX writing. Each time, it was a deliberate transition. Each time, it felt like I’d finally found that one thing and like I’d live happily ever after doing it.
When we moved to Germany, that same question resurged: “What next?” The pressure to choose and commit paralyzed me. And so the Great Procrastination began. Instead of just going for something, I was weighing all the pros and cons, discussing all the potential opportunities with ChatGPT, polling my friends about where they felt my strengths lay, and taking personality tests.
I was like the donkey who stood in front of two equally tempting sheaves of hay and eventually died of starvation. Only in my thirties did I finally realize that this belief in a one true calling might have held me back more than anything else in my life. It stopped me from experimenting with things that didn’t “align” with that vision.
So from now on, I’m going to do my best to avoid this trap and just follow my curiosity to see where it leads me. Taking a piece of advice I once got, I’m trying to make short-term commitments and treat each project as a date rather than a marriage.
Headline image by marcokaufmann on Unsplash
The way you wrote this (especially the donkey) makes it sound like this a common expression, but I don't know it (I have sinced looked it up and it appears to be relatively common after all). I would say
He is talking about the French philosopher Jean Buridan's paradox of the ass, known as "Buridan's Ass." It is about free will and decision-making. The donkey couldn't decide which bale of hay it preferred and ended up starving to death because of its indecision.
Your post somehow triggered me. For a long time, I hoped there were one big, wonderful purpose for myself. Unfortunately, it turns out I like too many things and enjoy doing so many different things, I just can't stick to one great purpose. And perhaps it's simply that some people are destined for great, unique things, while others have changing, temporary interests. And both ways of life are equally admirable.
@CloudyDe Absolutely! There's an interesting book titled "I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was" by Barbara Sher, where she coined the terms "divers" and "scanners". Divers tend to have one deep interest, while scanners are interested in lots of different things.
“To Scanners the world is like a big candy store full of fascinating opportunities, and all they want is to reach out and stuff their pockets.
It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? The problem is, Scanners are starving in the candy store. They believe they’re allowed to pursue only one path. But they want it all. If they force themselves to make a choice, they are forever discontented. But usually Scanners don’t choose anything at all. And they don’t feel good about it.”
@LiubovVasilyeva Oh, yes, this book sounds interesting. I've put the book on my reading list. Haven't read an English book in a while anyway.