We need to learn how to live in a Fluxtopia. If you’re not sure what a Fluxtopia is, check out my earlier posts on Fluxtopia. Simply put, we live in a state of constant change.
How do you function in a constant state of flux? You have to decide what your core values are. What’s important to you? This has always been the ultimate knowledge: Know Thyself. If you actually know who you are, you know what you want. The world may change around you, but you can stay consistent, stay stable.
How do you know thyself?
When I was an undergraduate I bounced from major to major, not sure why I was even in college. I knew I wanted a degree— in truth, not having one was never an option for me. My parents wanted me to have a job, ideally as a medical doctor. I was a dutiful son and majored in pre-med — even took the MCAT. I confused their version of who I was for who I actually was. I think they made the same mistake of seeing me, not as me, but as their version of me. I took pre-med classes and did what I was supposed to do, but every chance I got, I took English, anthropology, and religious studies classes. I was miserable, my GPA was in shambles, and I was clueless.
I read an interview in Omni Magazine with Francis Crick about how he and James Watson had become genetics pioneers. Crick was spending his nights at the pub, and had no direction. He realized he had to change. The story resonated with me. I wasn’t hanging out in pubs, but I was aimlessly taking courses I didn’t like, and worse yet, I’d just earned decent scores on my MCAT, meaning I’d probably get into a medical school. It wouldn’t be a good medical school as my GPA sucked, but I knew how to write a great admissions essay and interview well, not to mention I had always been a chameleon and could easily present my parents’ version of me as my version of me.
This terrified me. I was creating a life for myself that I didn’t want. I’d seen how miserable my mother and father were by chasing other people’s dreams. That, however, is not my story to tell.
Reading the Omni article opened my eyes. I realized I actually had a choice in what I wanted to study: a choice in who I was. It was the end of the semester, so I did the unthinkable. I dropped out. I unenrolled myself from the next semester of classes, and decided to put what I’d read to good use. I decided to apply the Gossip Test.
In the article, Crick, realizing he was aimlessly wasting his life in pubs, designed an experiment to see what he should do with his life. He called it the Gossip Test. Every night, after pubbing, he stumbled home and wrote down everything he’s argued with his friends about. His premise for the experiment was that if he could find the things that really excited him— the things he was passionate about— he’d know what to do with his life.
This was a revolutionary idea to me. The idea that what I was interested in should drive my life’s work, and not be driven by what everyone said I should be interested in.
In a good scientific manner, I set my experiment. I would drop out of college for a year, write down everything that really excited me daily— conversations, books, magazine articles, movies— everything. At the end of the year I would either know college wasn’t the choice for me, or I’d know what I wanted to study.
Nine months into the experiment, I saw a trend in my Gossip Test journal. I spent a weekend categorizing my data. Going through my journal and creating categories from my entries (movie quotes, song lyrics, stories unfinished, and arguments with friends) formed a cohesive story. There was a consistent trend in what I was passionate about. I was passionate about understanding the human experience. I was passionate about telling stories, and how we tell them.
I knew I had to go back to college. I also knew I needed to study either Anthropology or English. I chose Anthropology. More importantly, I started asking the most important questions: who am I? What do I want?
Francis Crick in that Omni interview had exposed me to a universal truth: Know Thyself, and he’d given me a tool to start.
How does this help with Fluxtopia?
When the world is uncertain and out of control, you can let yourself get swept away by the chaos, or you can choose to follow your internal drive, or calling, or drummer, or whatever you call it.
You can choose to not get swept away by the chaos and chart your own course, but only if you know what that course is. The only way you can do that is to know who you are, and what you want.