What should I do with my life is the wrong size of question

What would I tell my younger self that he didn’t know then and I know now?

Question 29 of the Index, Romanus Berg

The question arrives whole and it cannot be answered whole, which is exactly why it keeps coming back. You are not going to type it into anything and receive a life.

A question that large is not really a question yet. It is a pressure, and underneath it there is usually a smaller and much harder one that would be answerable this week if it were said out loud. The large version is the safer of the two, because nothing can be done about it today and therefore nothing has to be.

The way down is not to pick a career. It is to find the specific thing the large question is standing on. Sometimes that is a job you already know you are going to leave. Sometimes it is a person you have not been honest with. Sometimes it is that you already know what you want and the wanting embarrasses you. The smaller question is reliably the one you would rather not say.

Nobody can hand you that question, because it is made out of your own material and only you have it. But it can usually be found in about twenty minutes by something that is willing to keep asking rather than to start advising.