“One of the great puzzles in life is how do people find their vocation? How do people find their core identity, their talents? And I sometimes think of it as like passing a metal detector over the ground, and very occasionally something will let off a little beep, a beep of intensity, of interest, heightened thoughtfulness, and you think, there's a fragment here below the ground of my true self. Now, my true self is shattered, or it came in disassembled form, it's buried, it's scattered over a vast area, and the task of life is to recreate it from hints. And I think that, you know, one of the great challenges, I mean, I think one of the big, big challenges, and it happens to every young person, is what should I do with my life? It's one of these central questions of philosophy in a way, because unless you're a very rare person, you will have to assemble a vision of your future. It's not going to come ready-made, and there won't be a voice from the sky going, you are an accountant, or you are a downhill skier. It's going to be something you have to assemble, and you'll assemble it in bits. You'll have to recreate the original statue of you that was shattered a long time ago and that lies across a vast area. So like an archaeologist of the self, you have to build that up, and you have to build it out of those little beeps”
Alain de Botton