Another overarching theme (broken up into different components) in the life of (many many of them, if not most) 20-something-year-olds:

"What should I do with my life?"
"What is the best way to live my life?"
"Will I just become an office slave, doing meaningless work for the rest of my life?"
"Am I selling out because I like the cushy income and nice things?"
"Why don't I have passion in the work I do?"
"Is it unrealistic to have passion in the work I do?"
"Am I wasting my life doing X?"
"Is there really a calling for me?"
etc, etc, etc.

It's true, not everyone goes through these sort of existential type questions. However, many many many of my friends, family, fellow students do - that it almost feels like it's the air that we breathe. I think those of us that are in school tend to be temporarily sheltered from some of these questions (in the daily push/stress to get our schoolwork done) but occasionally we are jolted into the same fight and contemplation. I dunno, maybe work folk who are relatively settled don't experience it as often as I think. In any case, it's the most popular set of questions/issues that come up in serious conversations right after the marriage, soul-mate, dating and love issue questions.

Now it's easy to brush these thoughts off when you feel like you've got some semblance of a path figured out. Go to school for X years. Work for Y years. Maybe get married, have Z kids. Live in ABC City.

And perhaps it may be more symptomatic among the relatively affluent or solid middle-class background who have the luxury of getting to make such choices. If you're worried about making the rent month-to-month, maybe these thoughts are of low-priority concern.

So I was reading this book tonight called (not surprisingly) What Should I Do with My Life? by a guy named Po Bronson. Fascinating read. Bronson basically interviews like 30-40 people, from a wide range of ages, socioeconomic/education backgrounds, careers, to ask them how they found their "calling". Of course he's basically doing a bunch of editorializing and framing of the stories, but he really was trying to be as "objective" as possible, not trying to present any particular agenda, but finding out what made people tick, how they went about it and what did they learn along the way. [If you've read Studs Terkel's Working, it's quite similar.]

And he interviews them via phone/email/in person over a period of months or years, travelling to see them, sometimes actually working alongside them, etc. He sometimes interjects to give them advice or rebuke them. He sometimes cries with them and shares his own pains and experiences. (Bronson got a BA Economics from Stanford, worked as some sort of daytrader at a prestigious firm, then a Masters of Fine Arts in Creative Writing at San Francisco State. He's written for NY Times, Wall Street Journal, a couple of his own books - all bestsellers, I think. He also tells a little about his failed first marriage and the guilt over his happy life with his second wife and child, etc.)

As an example of one story - one man came from super-privileged family, got top education (including Harvard Business School), groomed to become CEO of Fortune 150 company (would inherit from father, who'd inherited from his father) and seemed to be set for that life. His marriage to high school sweetheart fell apart (something to do with the 80+ hour workweeks) and then he started questioning what it was all for.

He then discovered his passion for law enforcement. He quit his super-lucrative job and trained at a police academy. He did really well, but no one would hire him. Not the FBI, not LAPD, not even local police. He'd never been denied anything in his life before. Once you attended Harvard B-School, you thought you could change the world in an instant, you just needed to decide where. But he kept persevering, and decided to volunteer for a year in order to get a job with the El Monte police department. (There's more to this, but in summary...) he finally landed a position. And the author describes going on a graveyard-shift with him, riding in the police car, stopping teenagers, busting people for drugs, warning transvestite prostitutes... and always suspicious of the criminal activity that could sit so subtly behind any everyday act.

And he felt like his work mattered. He was doing something to help people, safeguard society, whatever.

The crazy thing is that he still lives in his spotless luxury Venice Beach condo, and drives his Mercedes to work. He likes the dichotomies in his life. I think his family empire manufactured steel and ball bearings and the really funny thing is that all the officers in his dept put these bearings in their boots - but don't realize that he's the same last name as the name on those bearings!

There are so many other such stories in the book - not all so dramatic, and of those who are far less educated and privileged. Some are of those who started afresh in second careers. There may not be any one-size-fits-all self-help prescriptions, but wow, what a collection! And what a way to get a look into how other people live and see the world! It really makes me think and reflect on my own life and choices. Hmm. I could go on, but I think this post has been plenty long already.