The School of Life

Once viewed as a kind of long dream that meant nothing and could be forgotten about as soon as it was over, childhood is now conceived of as a momentously consequential period in which the entire emotional disposition of a person will be formed and their chances of a mentally healthy life determined.

This dual demand has ushered in a particular difficulty of modern life: that we must simultaneously pursue two very complicated ambitions, although these are far from inevitably aligned. We need to satisfy the soul and pay for our material existence

Titian introduced a complicating factor into the modern psyche. Previously, you either pursued satisfaction making or doing something as an amateur without expecting to make money from your efforts, or you worked for money and didn’t care too much about whether you actually enjoyed your work. Now, because of the new ideology of work, neither was quite acceptable any longer. The two ambitions – money and inner fulfilment – were being asked to coalesce

But it’s eminently possible that the kind of work someone is best suited to (and around which it will be possible for them to love what they do) doesn’t exist yet. One might have a great deal of potential for a kind of job that has yet to be invented.

It’s wholly reasonable not to know what work one should perform. And it is indeed often a great sign of maturity to realise that one doesn’t know, rather than suffer any longer under the punishing assumption that one should.

One’s nature is so complex, one’s abilities so tricky to define in detail, the needs of the world so elusive, that discovering the best fit between oneself and a job is a momentous, highly legitimate challenge that requires an immense amount of thought, exploration and wise assistance and might use up years of our attention.

Our brains are fatefully badly equipped to interpret and understand themselves.

not having a robust plan swiftly puts us at the mercy of the plans of others.

Paradoxically, it’s not our direct past thoughts about work that are typically most useful in guiding us to new, more fulfilling, work. Our search is for work we can love, not work we have done – and so we need to get to know a lot about what we love and why before we move too quickly to the formulation of a career plan.

We arrive in adulthood with the thought of what might truly please us very far down our list of priorities.