“Can I be frank?”
The lady across from me looked up from the forms in her hand and peeked over the half-moon glasses that throned on her pointy nose. I stared at her like a deer caught in headlights, petrified. After an awkward silence, she allowed herself to proceed.
“You seem a little…”
Oh no, please don’t say it, I thought while she searched for the right word to describe my resume. Please don’t say it. Our eyes locked. Please don’t say —
“…lost.”
I slumped deeper into my chair. Lost. Thank you very much. I’d sought out career counseling for encouragement, direction, and answers. But instead, my advisor injected insecurity into my veins.
“Believe me,” she said, “becoming a writer is risky. It rarely works out. Hasn’t worked out for me, either.” She then suggested that I should follow “career trends” and do something “reasonable.”
After the session, I felt dizzy. As if I’d lost the grounding beneath my feet. As if I’d entered a zone of zero gravity, lost in space and time.
The only thing that kept me grounded was the heavy stack of papers my counselor had handed me as a consolation prize. Job offers, flow charts, and fact sheets were waiting to be read, studied, and implemented. “Heck, maybe she’s right,” I thought. “Maybe this is what it takes to stop feeling lost. Maybe I just need to follow a reasonable career rather than squeeze money out of my written words.”
I walked on concrete, directionless.
A few minutes later, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was determined to end my uncertainty. And so, I popped into the next-best cafe, where I would apply to these “trendy jobs” to have a somewhat secure career path — and that would be the end of feeling lost.
Seven
“So tell me,” Ms. Strauss said once my classmates had left the room, “what do you want to be when you grow up?”
I always felt nervous when I was alone with Ms. Strauss, mostly because she loved to point out every little flaw in my assignments. Nothing I did was ever good enough for her. Chances are, she’d asked that question because she knew I hated it. But this time, I wouldn’t stutter or run away. I felt brave.
“Hm, I don’t know,” I replied, “What do YOU want to be when you grow up?”
Upon this, Ms. Strauss only laughed condescendingly and told me the question didn’t apply to her. She had already done the whole growing-up thing.
“But you,” she said, “you still have lots of growing up to do. You better start thinking about my question, young man.”
Sixteen
I adapted. After going through many variations of Ms. Strauss’s question from other grown-ups, I realized something. The question was never about me. It was about the person asking it. And so, when I had to answer the question for the high-school yearbook, I tried a new strategy:
I decided to lie.
“An astronaut,” I responded in a bored tone, trying to appear cool and casual. Because that’s what people wanted to hear, right? Something vague and dreamy but also something tangible and compliant with expectations. And indeed, the interviewer seemed impressed.
“Oh my god,” she said, “that’s so cool.”
Wearing a mask proved itself a viable survival strategy.
Eighteen
Most people had stopped asking me what I wanted to be when I grew up. This had two reasons.
First, I became an adult — well, at least on paper — and when you’re an adult you’re supposed to know. Everybody just suddenly, miraculously knows. After circling the sun eighteen times, it’s a given that you know what to do with your life on Earth.
Second, and perhaps more importantly, I pursued a career in engineering and project management. And with that, I headed down a path that was societally and parentally approved. It wouldn’t make me an astronaut, but it was reasonable. It would pay the rent, send me to fancy business dinners, and look good on paper.
Of course, I had no clue what I actually wanted. But that didn’t bother me or anyone else because, at last, I had found a ready-made, convincing reply to the grown-up question. “An engineer or project manager” was my new answer. And it was a good one, it seemed. I could tell from the reactions I received. “Ah!” and “Wow!” the grown-ups said, visibly relieved. And if it was my lucky day, they would even add: “Good job!”
That satisfied me. The approval from other grown-ups helped me convince myself that I was on the right path. Surely, Ms. Strauss would be proud.
Goodbye, uncertainty.
Twenty
And yet, the ghost of Ms. Strauss haunted me like a stalker on steroids. Her question followed me everywhere I went. Doubts and uncertainties echoed inside my skull like ricocheting gunshots in a bulletproof chamber.
And so, I tried everything I could to keep that chamber shut. I mastered the art of concealing my lostness. Whenever uncertainty emerged from the shadows, I simply brushed it up, like painting over dark spots on a white wall. Of course, I knew what to do with my life. What a stupid question! Yes, I had it all figured out. No, I did not need a break to reflect on my choices.
Breaks implied uncertainty. And uncertainty was unsexy.
Half a decade into my engineering career, all hell broke loose. The “bulletproof” chamber burst. Every uncertainty I had banished to my mind’s subterranean cavities now spurt to the surface.
Who are you, really?
What should you do with your life?
What is your purpose?
These excruciating questions rang through all my thoughts and actions, like an omnipresent tinnitus. Purpose, purpose, purpose… I started dreading the p-word. My crisis led me to YouTube videos, books, and late-night walks. But none could solve my p-word problems. Not even a video with the auspicious title, “Find your purpose in 9 minutes.”
But then, unexpectedly, I knew exactly what I had to do.
Twenty-Two
I abandoned my engineering career.
Out of the blue, my attention turned toward something I had never considered growing up: writing. Yes, I would become a writer. That would be it. Publishing thoughts and ideas on the internet. Maybe I would write a book one day? Well, I could figure out the details down the road. Because for now, I had all the certainty I needed.
Writing was the answer. Writing was my purpose.
And yet, with the advent of writing, external doubts about my career were unearthed like mighty Titans. The grown-ups returned with new intimidating questions:
Can you make money with that?
Isn’t that a little risky?
Have you ever thought about a real job?
And there it was again. Insecurity, uncertainty, lostness. Sometimes, in a few quiet moments, when reading Pema Chödrön or writing in my journal, I found serenity in my doubts. But then, a grown-up would point out the perils of becoming a writer, and — boom! — I immediately felt lost again.
At one point, I even considered returning to engineering — the secure, approved path. Free from risks, ambiguity, and money worries. The promise of certainty felt tempting.
All this led me into a brutal dilemma. Should I return to the secure yet soulless path of certainty? Or should I choose the unknown yet exciting road of uncertainty?
I couldn’t decide. And it was precisely this indecisiveness that, in turn, turbo-charged my feelings of uncertainty.
Worse, there was another feeling: shame. I was walking on eggshells, terrified to be called out for feeling lost. After all, I was an adult. And adults need to know.
Twenty-Four
Greeted by the sound of espresso machines and the scent of coffee, I sat down at a wooden desk with slender steel legs. I still felt dizzy from my career counseling session but decided to power through. That’s what an adult would do. And so, I opened my laptop, took a deep breath, and plunged into the job portal.
“Have you chosen yet?”
“I’m sorry, what?” I looked up from the job portal and saw the barista.
“Drinks. Coffee. Pastries. Can I get you anything?”
“Oh, uhm… no, I haven’t…” My eyes darted between the menu, the barista, and the menu again. I felt pressured to choose.
“I’m sorry,” I heard myself mumbling, “I’m a bit indecisive today.”
I was convinced the barista would take me for the caricature of a lost twenty-something: hesitant to order, grown-out hair, surrounded by printed-out job descriptions. But just when I expected him to confirm that, yes, I did indeed seem indecisive, uncertain, and lost, his face melted into pure compassion.
“That’s alright,” he smiled. “Take all the time you need.”
He slowly walked away from me, cleared a dirty coffee cup from another table, and proceeded to pull espresso shots like a Zen monk.
And then — lightness filled the room.
The afternoon sun shone through the glass window and landed on the wooden tables, drawing clear lines between shadow and light. Next to me, two mothers were debating about their children’s futures. A man in a corner was reading the newspaper.
I exited the job portal, shut my laptop, and ordered filter coffee.
I chuckled.
Now
Ever since that day, whenever I felt lost or uncertain, I had to think about the barista’s two sentences:
“That’s alright. Take all the time you need.”
They’re less punchy than a motivational YouTube video and less practical than my counselor’s career tips. Heck, they weren’t even meant as advice. And yet, these two boring sentences helped me stop feeling lost — not because they revealed answers, but because they provided reassurance.
All my life, people have told me — be it intentionally or not — that I needed to force myself into a narrow box of expectations. That my life would never be good enough until I had it all figured out. And so, all my aspirations to become an astronaut, engineer, project manager, or writer were desperate attempts to quickly find answers, security, and certainty.
But what if feeling lost doesn’t need an answer?
What if feeling lost is the answer?
While I was sitting in that sun-drenched cafe, watching people on the street, I thought about the letters that the poet Rainer Maria Rilke sent to his 19-year-old protege, Franz Xaver Kappus. In one of them, Rilke responded to Kappus’s confusion, doubt, and uncertainty about becoming a young man and a poet.
Rilke writes:
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”
I still don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. (Sorry, Ms. Strauss.) But I get it now: feeling lost has been the point all along. Even if I had found all the answers, they would’ve been useless because I wouldn’t have been able to live them.
So, today — now — I’m busy living the questions. And who knows, maybe tomorrow or someday in the distant future, I might gradually live into the answers.
It’s alright. I’ll take all the time I need.