basically the same as doing-it-all, should combine
What do you want to do?
This question was posed to me in a state of heightened awareness, and I found that I couldn’t immediately articulate a concise answer to this. My mind flitted between so many vastly different possibilities that they would be impossible to live out in multiple lifetimes. I thought of things like “I want to travel the world and document the beauty of life and the struggle of humanity” and “I want to find emotional resonance with as many as I can through my writing, giving voice to the unvoiced feelings I felt” and “I want to advance a society where humans and machines live in harmony as collaborators, where technology acts as a true bicycle for both the human mind and the human body” among other desires like living and working as a bartender or barista in Taipei, working full-time as a tinkerer on my own software projects, dipping my toe in the world of film and storytelling. When the question is about the things you want to do, it’s easy to believe you’ll do it all, that there’s no limit to the passions thay ou can follow.
A more exacting framing of the question might be:
Who do you want to be?
We’ve been asked variants of this question all our lives, from a crafts project in elementary school, to create a poster of what you want to be when you grow up to deciding on which major to apply for college admission to which industry or direction you want to take your first career in. It seems like all of your childhood is preparing you to have a definite, finalized answer to this question, to give you the opportunity to explore different interests and come to a satisfying decision. However, as students enter into society as working adults, many become unsatisfied with their way of life, wondering whether this is the path that they want to follow for the rest of their lives. I think society conditions us to choose “successful” and standard people to emulate. We are told to want to be people of high status and abundant riches and immense power. If there’s one thing I’ve learned the past two years of being a “real adult” in society, it’s that there’s no limit to the number of paths that can lead to true fulfillment. I’ve grown a hearty admiration for those that follow unconventional paths that align most with their true drives because they entail more uncertain and precarious journeys. It’s easy to follow the standard, worn paths that society has highlighted for us. The good education to stable job to happy family pipeline is a recipe for respectabe citizens and a stable society, and it’s idolized across the country for everyone to pursue.
In Making of Prince of Persia, Jordan Mechner talks about his split desire