The Surprising Truth About “Finding Your One True Calling”
Spoiler: You Don’t Just Have One
"There’s one thing God has called you to do."
"You gotta find your purpose."
"When you find out the reason you were born, that’s when you really start living."
"The 10,000-hour rule, man—you gotta grind those hours in one thing before you’re an expert."
"Be the best at one thing."
And yeah, sure, okay—there’s some truth to this. I’m not here to talk skibidi crap about the cardiologist who literally spends every waking second thinking about hearts (both in the physical, valves-and-arteries sense and probably in some insufferably poetic way as well). That kind of focus is important—because when my chest starts feeling like it’s got the Alien embryo trapped inside, I don’t want my doctor to be like, "Oh, you know, I dabble in cardiology, but my real passion is sculpting miniature Civil War figurines."
BUT.
For the rest of us—the generalists, the dilettantes, the deplorables who refuse to pick just one thing because we love doing twenty things (and, let’s be honest, we do all twenty of them pretty dang well)—this whole “one-purpose” narrative has been an existential shackle. We are multipotentialites, and we cross-pollinate like mad scientists, taking what we learned from playing piano and smuggling it into writing essays or studying theology or designing video games or God-knows-what.
We are the creative freaks, the hyper-curious, the ants-in-our-pants ones who can’t sit still because our brains are basically a cheese and wine pairing experiment run by Ratatouille—and surprise: this is exactly what the world needs.
Because—and here’s the kicker—innovation is now happening at warp speed. And what is it that we do best? We adapt, synthesize, and invent. We see connections no one else sees. We bring a jazz musician’s improvisational instincts to corporate strategy meetings and a filmmaker’s narrative sensibilities to scientific research papers. But we have paid for this ability dearly, because we’ve spent years—decades, even—secretly wondering if we are fundamentally broken. Because the Purpose People—the ones who eat, sleep, and breathe a single all-consuming mission—have spent our entire lives telling us that we should be like them.
And guess what? We’ve tried. And we can’t.
So we wander the halls of existence somewhat hopelessly but never aimlessly, always searching for that one purpose we were promised, when, in reality, the whole premise was snake oil from the start. Because the idea that we all have just one calling? It’s theologically and philosophically false.
So here’s the truth bomb that will set you free:
