What should I do with my life?

The question sounds as though there is a particular life waiting to be identified, after which you can begin. That promise is attractive: it would protect you from spending yourself on the wrong thing. It can also keep you waiting.

Instead of asking for a complete answer, notice what currently deserves more of your attention. Work that absorbs you? Someone you want to care for? An ability you keep postponing? These are clues, not instructions from a hidden authentic self.

You may also need to grieve lives you cannot live alongside the one you choose. Even a good decision leaves things out. That loss does not prove you chose badly.

Choose a next commitment small enough to examine and substantial enough to teach you something. Understanding your life need not be a condition of participating in it.

Jing proposes a commitment that teaches you something. I would add that a life is not only a project for discovering yourself. Someone may need your company while you are still uncertain about your purpose.

This need not condemn you to living for other people's expectations. It offers a different starting point: where can your attention meet something real? A person, a craft, a place, a task worth doing properly.

You cannot know in advance everything such a commitment will make of you. My bookshop taught me things that no plan to become a wise man would have included, particularly on delivery days.

Perhaps meaning grows partly from what you return to with care. You can begin returning before you know what to call the whole journey.

I suggest requesting a complete itinerary from Life. Mine arrived late, contained three blank pages and directed me to a business that had already closed. I founded it, so I could hardly complain.

There is a widespread belief that everyone else received the deluxe edition. They are merely reading theirs with a confident expression. Some are holding it upside down.

Jang has a bookshop. Jing has a consulting room. I had a museum whose most popular exhibit was its own failure. These are not convincing signs of a central planning department.

You may begin with an afternoon rather than a destiny. Do something sufficiently interesting to make tomorrow ask a follow-up question. If the itinerary finally arrives, check whether it has your name on it. Mine said Gerald.