Is There Just One True Calling?

When we were little children, we were often asked the question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" And we'd all reply with our ideal responses- some would say a doctor or a teacher or an astronaut. But that was the childhood, now coming to the time when every person is expected to decide his career path, there seems to be no other question that causes as much anxiety as "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Most of us don't really know or have any concrete idea about our calling at such a young age. And we also many times find ourselves interested in varied and not so related areas. We can happen to like math and singing or biology and literature, which can be frustrating because society expects a clear and definite answer to the question posed above.

The question in itself is inhibiting because it tries to ask what one could be, not what all one could be. The answer must be a single thing we want to pursue. For people, it's pretty odd to be a poet and a biochemist, the choice must be made. The notion of the narrowly focused life is highly romanticized in our culture. It's this idea of destiny or the one true calling, the idea that we each have one great thing we are meant to do during our time on this earth, and you need to figure out what that thing is and devote your life to it. But what if there are a lot of different subjects we're curious about, and many different things we want to do? At such point in our lives, we might feel we don't have a purpose. As everyone else seems to have figured it out and we might feel we're alone as to not be able to devote our lives to a single career is unacceptable in society.

But we have to understand that not everyone is programmed to be the same way. Not everyone is able to set his heart on a single career or passion for his entire life. People can have multiple passions and these many passions are to be embraced which will lead to a happier and fulfilling life. And the world as of now, with complex and multidimensional problems, needs creative people with varied interests to help tackle them with their out-of-the-box thinking.