At the risk of sounding contrary, I would say that the most important thing I've learned--the thing I wish to hell I could go back and try to impart to a younger me--is that for me, at least, there *is* no one right path, no true calling, no singular passion that will transform my life and give it total meaningfulness and fulfillment.
For years and years I assumed that there *was* and that I just hadn't found it yet, and so I tossed aside countless perfectly good and satisfying careers--very much like some romantic who thinks there's only one man in the world who's her true soulmate, and keeps dumping really good guys because they're not, y'know, *perfect.* The work I do now is often interesting and sometimes annoying and intermittently tedious and certainly does not cause my candle to burn at both ends, but lets me feel like I'm making modest positive changes in some people's lives, and pays me a decent income, and is entirely OK for now, until I decide to ditch it and do something different.
Writing, which for a while felt like my true passion, seems to have gone into a long dry spell that I'm afraid may be permanent, but really that's nothing new; I've had true passions before that flared up and ran their course and burned out and are now just memories.
One thing I've concluded is that some people are by nature hedgehogs and some are foxes (to quote Isaiah Berlin, who was in turn quoting some Greek guy--“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”). Some people have that single driving, consuming passion, and some people have a whole lot of things that interest and preoccupy them for a time before they move on. A good thing to figure out early in life is which kind one is, and then stop trying to make oneself be the other. I'd have had a happier life if I'd done that.
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For years and years I assumed that there *was* and that I just hadn't found it yet, and so I tossed aside countless perfectly good and satisfying careers--very much like some romantic who thinks there's only one man in the world who's her true soulmate, and keeps dumping really good guys because they're not, y'know, *perfect.* The work I do now is often interesting and sometimes annoying and intermittently tedious and certainly does not cause my candle to burn at both ends, but lets me feel like I'm making modest positive changes in some people's lives, and pays me a decent income, and is entirely OK for now, until I decide to ditch it and do something different.
Writing, which for a while felt like my true passion, seems to have gone into a long dry spell that I'm afraid may be permanent, but really that's nothing new; I've had true passions before that flared up and ran their course and burned out and are now just memories.
One thing I've concluded is that some people are by nature hedgehogs and some are foxes (to quote Isaiah Berlin, who was in turn quoting some Greek guy--“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”). Some people have that single driving, consuming passion, and some people have a whole lot of things that interest and preoccupy them for a time before they move on. A good thing to figure out early in life is which kind one is, and then stop trying to make oneself be the other. I'd have had a happier life if I'd done that.