A Theory of Life

The mega-process of trial and error

The crowd at Fontana di Trevi, in Rome. I like this photo. It might not be relevant to this essay. Or maybe it is.

I’ve always believed that we enter this world with a unique predisposition, a strength, a niche where we effortlessly excel. But we don’t know what that is. No one is there to inform us when we get ejected into existence. Our mom would love to tell us, right then and there, but she doesn’t know either. Nobody knows. Yet, it’s there. Wouldn’t it be nice to have someone present at birth, when we inhale our first bit of air, to tell us -- as specifically as possible -- what we really are about? Someone (or something) similar to Harry Potter’s sorting hat, in a way. Maybe it would. Or maybe it’d only spoil things, remove the thrill of going through the joy and pain and disappointment and surprise of finding out ourselves. Of discovering our true calling. The thrill of that mega-process of trial and error called life. 

I also believe that the quest for our true calling is what we’re here for, our purpose. And what we’re here for is the meaning of life. The meaning of our life, though. Not the overarching meaning of life. I don’t believe such a thing even exists. Religions define a “meaning of life” that’s applicable to everybody, which is usually a sort of transition state towards something else. A test bed where, if certain rules of conduct are strictly followed, devotees get transferred to that something else as a reward, and they stay there for eternity. That’s what they taught me, at least. 

My theory is that each and every one of our lives has a different meaning, because each and every one of us has a different, unique, true calling to discover. And there’s no standard, universal way to do it. In fact, there may be no way at all. But we have a lifetime to try, and we have a lifetime to enjoy our true calling, once we find out what it is. So we’d better get to work and find out, cause this isn’t something that’s going to get us a special pass to something else, to a place where we can finally relax forever; this is something that’s going to make our life -- this life -- awesome and fulfilling and complete and real. It’s going to make our life real because only when we discover our true calling can we be our authentic selves. Does this mean we are not living as our authentic selves if we have not discovered our true calling? It does, but we might never even notice. Being our authentic selves means that we live our life doing what we’ve been created for. But we don’t know until we find out, until we get to the epiphany. If we get there at all. So, we may as well go through life without being aware that the way we live doesn’t reflect our true, authentic self. 

And this life is all we have. So I guess we should try and discover our true calling as soon as possible, so that we have more life left to benefit from it, to live as our authentic selves. Maybe when we leave this world we get another chance, and we get to re-enter it as someone else. And sometimes I like to believe we will. But that would be a different life, with a different true calling, and a different quest for it. And another, different mega-process of trial and error.

Discovering our true calling is hard. Me, I haven’t discovered it. Not yet, I like to think. Time is kind of running out, I know. But what can I do? These things cannot be forced and aren’t a function of the amount of work and effort you put into them. Some people say there are things that I do well, but by no means these are things that I do naturally and effortlessly. And doing things naturally and effortlessly is an unequivocal sign that they’re coming out of one’s true calling. I’ll try singing in the subway, or giving hugs upon request, or reassuring people going through bad times, or teaching kids. I’m sure there’s something out there that comes naturally and effortlessly. But for now, nothing in my life resembles a true calling. Not even writing -- as much as I enjoy writing, it doesn’t come effortlessly. Not for me. 

But why is it so difficult to find our true calling? The number one impediment is that we follow, or are persuaded by, other people’s definition of success. So we want to be like them, and we try to do what they do and of course it’s hard and not natural at all to us, but we insist and insist, telling ourselves the story that by working really hard we can become like them. But that’s bullshit and so hard to let go. It’s so hard to surrender the idea that unless you have a certain amount of money in the bank by the time you’re thirty or whatever then you’re not successful. Society puts this type of pressure on us and we blindly fall prey to it. The second impediment is that we cannot become our authentic selves by ourselves, because we’re unable to see our own uniqueness. We are opaque to ourselves. Maybe because we’re too judgmental or self-conscious or hard on ourselves. So, paradoxically, to find our uniqueness we need the help of everybody else. 

This is Kevin Kelly’s framework and I like (and agree with) it so much that now it is also mine, and I’m shamelessly plagiarizing it. “I don't think I've met anybody who has achieved this”, he says (à propos of being able to say that they've become fully themselves via discovering and pursuing their true calling). “I've met a lot of people who are going in that direction, who are approaching that. But it's like an asymptotic curve, where you never actually get there, as there's always some way to get a little bit closer.”

I’m watching Wimbledon on TV. It’s that time of the year. The grandest of the Grand Slams, the dream of every tennis player. There’s something mysteriously soothing about it. Maybe it’s the vivid green of the grass courts and the crisp white attire worn by the players, a manifestation of elegance, tradition, and decorum. Maybe it’s the soft light that illuminates the Centre Court. Or maybe it’s the discreet silence punctuated by the polite applause or occasional murmur of the crowd. A crowd that every year witnesses the crème de la crème of world tennis parade before its eyes.   

And I’m thinking that playing individual sports at the highest level and succeeding at them may be a sign of having found -- and pursuing -- a true calling. Novak Djokovic hasn’t lost a game on Wimbledon’s Centre Court in ten years, and today he’s won his 44th Wimbledon game in a row. An impressive track record, made even more impressive by how he plays his tennis -- naturally, effortlessly, as if the racket were an extension of his arm. In an interview, he said “I just like hitting the tennis ball”. It’s not work to him, it’s fun. Spontaneous, natural, effortless fun.

I heard Kevin Kelly (again) say that “the reward for good work is more work”. He says that our objective would be to find things that we want to spend as much time as possible working on. Forget about money or fame or power or what have you: what would you do if the only reward for doing it were getting to do more of it? And you were perfectly content with that? That’s probably the best definition of true calling I stumbled upon.

Now, for instance, I’m listening to Pat Metheny. And I’m thinking that music is another one of those domains where (theoretically) it could be easier to find out, in a relatively short time, whether a true calling is there. Certain musicians play like their authentic selves; they found their true calling. You can recognize them blindfolded. They’re distinguishable, unique, transparent, fearless. Playing music is what they’ve been created for. Others, not really. They were not created to play music, yet society and culture have exerted pressure on them to become musicians. They’re not unique, nor recognizable. They sound like someone else, because they want to sound like someone else. It’s comfortable to be like that. No risk-taking, please. There’s an awful lot of audience who don't care, but they buy our records. And that’s what counts, they’d say. And to the “what would you do if the only reward for doing it were getting to do more of it?” question, they’d probably answer “nothing”. But I’m 100% sure that if someone had asked Pat Metheny that question thirty or forty years ago, he would have answered “I would play my music”. 

So why is this important? Why should we go through life searching for our true calling? A simple answer would be because we have one, and having one is enough to make such a quest the purpose of our life, what gives it meaning. But if we are content with what we have, why mess things up? When we imagine a true calling, we tend to think of work. We tend to imagine a job that we love so much we can’t stop working. Something we would even pay to do. Something we do naturally and effortlessly better than anyone of the other eight billion people minus one. 

In a world with money, we’re spontaneously inclined to think of our true calling as something that maximizes our earning potential. But that can’t be it. So many jobs can secure good money with some bearable effort. Working around the clock is painful, but the reward is worth the pain. We humans are used to this notion of no pain no gain, as the money and the feeling of being good performers, good earners, and well-accepted by society more than offsets the pain. But we’d stop working on a whim, if we could afford it. The very idea of work, no matter how fulfilling, is about something that we have to do. Work is a duty. How can we possibly feel fulfilled by something that we’d stop doing any minute, if we could?

Now imagine a world without money. What would our true calling be? Can we even stretch our imagination to picture a world where the only way to signal who we are would be to just be? Our authentic selves would surface spontaneously, because we would have no need to fake our existence by embracing other people’s preferences and principles and aspirations. We would only want to be ourselves, rather than Jeff Bezos or Elon Musk. We wouldn’t be envious of someone else’s success. We would feel free to invent our own definition of success, the only one that counts. And all individual definitions of success would be equally valuable and fulfilling.

Imagining is free. And healthy. And a personal theory of life is probably something we all should have. Theories often find no validation in reality, but they help give meaning to our days, a purpose to wake up to every morning. I like my theory of life. But I wish it were easier.

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