There (probably) isn’t just one thing.

This whole notion of finding (and doing) your thing: I talk and write and think about it, oh… quite a bit. One of the elements of thing-finding that receives some pretty intense pondering on my part is any emphasis on the singularity of the thing.

So yeah, there isn’t just one thing.

I’m really sorry, but it has to be said. Because I don’t think it’s very helpful to seek out and chase some elusive discovery of just one thing. Especially when you’re doing something that definitely isn’t the thing and you have no idea what the thing is. Because, argh, the frustration.

Waiting for some definable purpose or career to suddenly flutter into your consciousness… Well, you might be waiting a long time. Because in my experience it doesn’t usually happen that way.

I know, this might sound like terrible news. Or maybe fantastic news? I tend to think both.

Terrible because, yeah, there’s a bit of a journey involved. (Oops, again, sorry. But the fact that there’s a journey involved is actually also fantastic. The terrible part comes in when you want an answer right-this-very-minute so that you can stop doing the not-thing.)

Fantastic because instead of helplessly waiting for an outside force to bestow upon you the knowledge of some fully-formed idea nugget of your perfect career/purpose/path, you can actually start taking your own steps along the journey. (Okay, the word journey is corny, but process is boring and insufficient.)

Also fantastic because the fact that there’s no one thing means you definitely haven’t missed the boat on finding it. Looking at it this way, lack of education or experience becomes kind of irrelevant. It’s not like you just get one chance to figure it out. Which means that bombing your MCATs or choosing the wrong major will someday seem like, well, no biggie.

And… there’s also sorta, kinda… just one thing. Maybe. For you.

It’s just that the one thing is never something straightforward like aeronautical engineer or fourth grade teacher. It might be something more like the undercurrent of curiosity that drives a former aeronautical engineer turned fourth grade teacher whose greatest thrill comes from getting nine year olds excited about science while raising his family on a working organic farm and training for triathlons in his spare time. To take a fairly simple example.

Former Catholic Monk turned psychotherapist/musicologist/teacher/writer Thomas Moore (no really, see?) writes about creating a life’s work by following the urge of your daimon:

A daimon is an unnamed urge that pushes you in a certain direction. It is the force behind the passion and tenacity of your yearning… It is a fertile idea; that the deep passion and drivenness that stays with us all our lives is there from the beginning. The daimon is a primal, creative urge. The daimonic voice is deep-seated and connected to your personality and destiny.

So maybe there isn’t one thing, but instead one primal, creative urge. And we can pick up a thread of it at any time, little by little, without knowing what the end result is going to look like.