A student came to my office yesterday and asked me what he should major in. I asked what advice he’d gotten. He answered “everyone tells me to do what I love!” This is in line with what I’d guessed. In fact, I ask my classes regularly what kind of advice they get, and it is consistently the same: study what you love. Do what brings fulfillment. Be authentically you. Find your passion and pursue it.
Of course, it’s all rubbish advice. I told him as much.
There is some pragmatic old man wisdom here. A dear relative of mine studied in a field that is somewhat less pragmatic—an artistic endeavor that is fun and engaging and interesting and creative, but not exactly practical or high-earning. I asked what her experience was. She said, with a mix of humor and earnest regret, that “they were the best four years of my life!”
In the first place, pursuing what you love is a good way to wind up without a decent job, and as it turns out, having a decent job contributes a great deal to life’s meaning. If you can contribute to a family and a community, you can have time for other things. Yes, it’s a tragedy that so many nice men become dentists, but many of those dentists have time to make music, serve at a soup kitchen, and raise good kids.
I’m reminded of Brother Merrill, who was in my congregation growing up. He was always the choir director. His wife was the pianist. He had a grand voice, filled with vibrato even when speaking normally. He would happily correct grammar, encourage people to speak up clearly, and to enunciate—basically, playing the role of choir director in every facet of his life. (And by the way, we all loved it. He was charming and kind and all of his corrections came with a good dose of love and affection.)
I remember one day my father asked him why he’d chosen his career—he was a cancer surgeon. His answer has stayed with me: “I wanted to do two things: sing and farm. I could be a singer or a farmer, or I could be a surgeon and do both.”
So much for pragmatics, then.
I love The Art of Manliness podcast, and this episode was particularly interesting to me. It helped me make a few connections that I hadn’t before about purpose and meaning.
Specifically, I’ve always worried about the “find fulfillment” mantra of our age. It’s fundamentally selfish, and more directly, how does one go about finding fulfillment? Well did Jesus say that he who would save his life shall lose it, and he who shall lose his life shall find it. This is a profound, even eternal law.
It isn’t just that selling out has virtues—it does, but that’s not it at all. It’s that looking for your purpose is inevitably the worst way to find it.
I gave some advice to the young student who came by. Make a list of the things that make you feel alive—that fill a deep hunger within you. It’s not wrong, it’s just incomplete. Make that list—then make another: a list of what the world needs.
Find what checks both boxes.
According to the podcast, Nietzche said that you should think of the four most important moments of your life and try to draw a line between them to find “the fundamental law of who you are.” Brooks says, again in the podcast, that the best way to find purpose is to lose yourself—to stop asking “what do I want from life?” but rather, “what does life demand of me?”
I do not see people today who have too little—rather, they have too much. We are cursed by abundance. We have too much. We could seek more to the end of our fat, happy, rich lives, but we would simply be fatter, happier, richer, and somehow emptier.
The rich life—the real, meaningful life—is one of subtraction as much as addition. It is one focused on sacrifice and answering important questions—finding a quest, and devoting yourself to it.
So if you want to know what I think you should study, it isn’t about you. That’s the first lesson. It’s about doing some good in the world, and making the world better for your having been here.
And ironically, if you pursue helping others, you will be richly rewarded for it in the meantime.