Parallel Worlds
I’m at a certain crossroads in life. Having just quit my job, I’ve consequently been spending a great deal of time contemplating my career options. Naturally, I’ve caught myself many times imagining how great it would be if any of my hobbies (or past hobbies) could’ve formed into a genuine professional career. Before I began my first (and only) job at Paris Baguette, I was really into Olympic weightlifting, drumming, and learning Chinese—all during different epochs of my high school and college life. By now, I thought, I would’ve likely reached a highly proficient level had I just stuck it out and had just a little more determination and commitment.
I didn’t quit because it got difficult or because it took up too much time; I quit because I had too much self-doubt, and, above all, an unshakeable compulsion to be certain that what I was doing was my passion and my talent, that all the time and energy invested would be worth it. I wanted to prove to everyone that I could achieve something in life and do at least one thing that I could say I was better at than anyone else around me. This was an obsession with an outcome—to be certain that what I was doing would inevitably guide me towards professional success, approval, fulfillment, and joy. And so I began my quest to prove myself—an inane quest to gather proof and evidence to show everyone else that I was on the right track.
I wanted to prove that I was stronger than everyone else. I wanted to prove that I was doing the most technically difficult lifts compared to anyone else in the gym. I wanted to prove to my parents and friends that this was about improving my physical health. I wanted to be certain that one day, people would admire my physique, strength, and determination.
I wanted to prove that I was not like all the other supposedly aspiring who haphazardly and inconsistently practiced. I wanted to prove that I could land a gig. I wanted to prove that I was authentic, just for authenticity’s sake. I wanted to be certain that I could become a professional musician and I could make a living from this so my parents wouldn’t pester me about my career.
I wanted to prove that I wasn’t like all the other Chinese-Americans around me who never diligently studied their language and heritage. I wanted to prove to everyone that I was capable of memorizing how to pronounce and write thousands upon thousands of characters. I wanted to prove that dropping out of college was justified and not because I was lazy. I wanted to be certain that I could one day express myself perfectly in Chinese and blend in seamlessly with everyone else in Taiwan.
But proof and certainty weren’t what I needed. When I began to hit more and more roadblocks, all this mindset did was help me experience failure in advance. I gave up because I was not certain. And the moment I lost certainty was the moment I lost all motivation to continue. It wasn’t the outcome that mattered—it was the practice. The practice of engaging with the art itself.
By searching for (and then embracing) a practice that contributes to the people we care about, we can find a path forward. That path won’t always work, but we can trust ourselves enough to stick with it, to lean into it, to learn to do it better. The alternative is corrosive.
When we begin to distrust our own commitment to the practice, we’re left with nothing but fear. When we require outcomes as proof of our worth, we become brittle, unable to persist in the face of inevitable failure on our way to making a contribution.
- Seth Godin, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work
Why become stronger when you can grow stronger together with others? Why didn’t I find friends or others who would’ve been interested in training together and eventually going to lifting competitions together?
Why didn’t I document my daily practice routines and post them on YouTube, not only so that I could analyze my own work, but be generous in sharing ideas and struggles with others learning to drum as well?
Why didn’t I talk to and play with other aspiring musicians instead of grinding in the practice room alone all day, when I could be creating actual music? Why didn’t I find a study partner to learn Chinese, someone who was already fluent and was trying to learn English, thus enabling us to be generous with each other?
“Do what you love” is for amateurs.
“Love what you do” is the mantra for professionals.
- Seth Godin, The Practice: Shipping Creative Work
Having given up on all my previous hobbies by 2018, I was basically thrown into working a retail job at a local bakery chain after being prodded by my brother and my parents to be more productive with my spare time. Little would I know working as a cashier and eventually a manager at Paris Baguette was the best thing that ever happened to me. It wasn’t perfect by any means—far from it if I was honest, but I learned to love what I do regardless. The thing is, there was never a day I woke up for work and said, “I’m going to do this to be a better person, or so I could make more money, or get a promotion.” I always woke up, organized my daily to-do list, and contemplated how I could best contribute today; I was constantly brainstorming ways I could tackle a specific problem, how I could make the working experience for those around me just a little bit better, whether it was through redesigning workspaces to make them less frustrating to work in, rethinking workflows to save time and energy, or equipping each team member with the specific tools or knowledge they needed to succeed. Most of all, I always looked forward to sharing moments, however transient and insignificant they seemed at times, with both coworkers and customers alike. Day after day, this changed me. Realizing my transformation over time—gradually becoming more social, more confident, more brave, less cynical, less pessimistic—helped me understand that it is the practice that matters in and of itself—not the outcome. Focusing on my daily contribution—not obsessing over whether something was “worth it” or not—ultimately led me to become a person I can be proud to be. Could I have said the same, had I followed my heart, and “did what I love”?
Sometimes we like to think that there are alternate universes—parallel worlds—where if something was just a little different, everything would’ve turned out differently. But the only problem is, no one or anything is making it just a little different; that’s not the way the world works. There was no omniscient force that would trigger some event or spontaneous revelation in my life based on a whim. The circumstances and my state of mind at the time led me to those decisions. There is no parallel world where I magically mustered the willpower to continue weightlifting amidst the loneliness and disillusionment of high school, a world where I somehow put all my self-doubt and purposelessness behind me during college to continue drumming, or a world where, completely by blind luck and good fortune, found the confidence, maturity and determination to stay in Taiwan and continue learning Chinese. If parallel worlds exist, it certainly would not look like those.
I choose not to have regret because these experiences were all part of my life nonetheless. Who knows the person I would’ve become—much rather, the person I would’ve continued to be—had I stuck it out. It is the path I took, and this path—worn through by countless failures, despair, and uncertainty, and paved by self-forgiveness, generosity, and faith in the practice—led me to this point where I even have the wisdom and capacity to come to this revelation in the first place. Why would I take that all back?
These what-if scenarios exemplify our obsession with outcome; we never think about the process, while we obsess over the result—the person I could’ve been, the girlfriend I could’ve got, the career I could’ve had. But what about all the steps you took to get to that place? What about how that practice shapes you? No—I don’t wish I was an amazing weightlifter, a prolific drummer, or a bilingual prodigy. Because in each of those versions of myself, under an ostensibly great career hides a stagnant and still weak, close-minded, cynical, self-consumed, pessimistic, and naive self that would have remained unchallenged for years.
This mode of thought merely constitutes our self-fabricated narrative, a make-believe story to extricate ourselves from the shame and naïveté of our past, imagining the best versions of ourselves when we were actually at our worst.
