As I write this, it’s the 17th of December, and I’m thinking about the Wright brothers, my nephew’s love life, and how we plan our careers. Believe it or not, they’re related.
117 years ago, the Wright brothers made their first powered flight at Kitty Hawk. Despite the fact that the distance their Wright Flyer covered would fit easily inside the cabin of a 747, the event changed the world. From that point on, the question became how to evolve and improve on that initial design, not whether or not powered, controlled flight was possible.
Understandably, therefore, what the world focuses on is that transformative 12-second achievement. But the truth is, that endpoint was years of curious exploring in the making. Along the way, the brothers ended up inventing several other components, including their own wind tunnel to help evaluate wing designs, several successful gliders, and their own piston aircraft engine—substantially lighter weight than anything on the market. And that 1903 winter in Kitty Hawk was actually their third year of experimenting among the sand dunes there.
The point is that in 1899, the Wright brothers didn’t have it all figured out. They figured it out along the way.
I had that and many other journeys and adventures in mind the other night, when I talked to my nephew, who’s 27. He’d just started dating a woman he’d been good friends with for over two years, and he was agonizing a bit about how it was going to turn out, because he knew they were risking the friendship to pursue something more.
I pointed out that once you realize that you and a friend have more than platonic feelings for one another, the ship containing the option of continuing a stable and happy platonic friendship has kind of sailed. But I also told him that relationships are like any other grand adventure, exploration, or life journey. You don’t have to know how exactly where you’re going to end up, or be sure it’s going to work out, in order to feel confident about setting out. You just have to decide you want to begin. You take whatever information you have at the moment, and weigh whether you’re happy where you are, or if there’s a potentially happier option over the horizon … and if that potential happier option is worth leaving where you are.
In a sense, career decisions are no different. One coaching client I worked with knew she was stuck in a job she didn’t like. But she felt she had to know “the right” job she’d really love in order to make a move. And sitting unhappily in her office, she wasn’t coming up with any answer that felt right or perfect. So there she sat, trapped by the misguided notion that she had to know the destination before she set out.
The biggest problem with that kind of thinking is that none of us is likely to figure out what the perfect job is, or who the perfect partner is, sitting motionless in a chair somewhere. For one thing, humans are notoriously bad at imagining correctly what will make us happy in the future. But another piece is that a lot of important knowledge can only be learned through exploring and experience. My late uncle’s wife’s father (if you can track that relationship) was head of the team that developed the Saturn rocket that got the Apollo astronauts to the moon. In telling about it, he used to say that when the design team began, the challenge wasn’t just that they didn’t know how to build a rocket capable of reaching the moon. Like the Wright brothers, the technology they needed in order to do that didn’t even exist yet. They had to explore, invent, and figure it out along the way. To get the answers they needed, they had to try things out. And not everything worked.
In the same way, the only way we really figure out what relationship or career is going to make us happy is by exploring possible options and taking notes on what works, what doesn’t work, and what seems to be missing, still. We have to try things out. In the process, we learn more about what we like, need, and feel good about doing. I didn’t even figure out the vague career field I wanted to pursue until I was almost 30, and even then, it was only by getting a job as a writer that I learned how much I liked it.
We can certainly narrow down the infinite options to a more manageable number of beginning points, and avoid some lost time and effort, by taking note of what we think we’re good at, the kinds of things we like to do, and what activities we find rewarding vs. annoying … and then looking for jobs that seem to fit those requirements to some degree. But then we just need to decide to start; to find a job. Any job that checks enough of those boxes to be a productive starting point. It doesn’t have to be the right choice, in the end. It just has to be educational. Of course, that means we need to actually pay attention and take notes about what’s working and what’s not, and what we’re learning from all that, along the way. Just like the Wright brothers and the Saturn rocket design team must have done. (And yes, the same rule applies to trying out relationships, even if the criteria and questions we ask ourselves are a bit different.)
The point is, we often surprise ourselves. Few people I know who love their jobs now set out with that clear knowledge or vision in mind. They got there because they looked at what they knew about themselves, figured out a possible starting point, and then decided to set out. To do, as one friend put it, “something, even if it’s something wrong.” The rest, just like any explorer who makes great discoveries, finds great love, or ends up with a job they love … they figured out along the way.
