I’ve been thinking about the chicken and the egg.

It is probably the first paradox we ever learn, a fledgling thought experiment.  “You can’t have an egg without a chicken, but you can’t get a chicken without an egg!”

But the-chicken-and-the-egg scenario doesn’t stay a childhood curiosity.  In fact, it is probably staring you in the face.

If you are in the process of figuring out your thing – your purpose and life sustaining passion, your career and calling – you are also probably trying to figure out the “life sustaining” portion of the equation.  As in, money.  If your calling leads you down an entrepreneurial path, then you’re like “Well I need money to get started but I want to get started because I need money!”

It’s the-chicken-and-the-egg game for adults!

The problem is that the-chicken-and-the-egg is a lie.

We’re fallaciously thinking in absolutes.  That you can’t have a new chicken without a previous chicken.  That there must be, have always been, a chicken!

Except we actually know there wasn’t, a la evolution.  (I’m going to let Wikipedia handle this!)

“The Theory of Evolution says that species change over time in the process of evolution.

Since DNA can be modified only before birth, a mutation must have taken place at conception or within an egg such that an animal similar to a chicken, but not a chicken, laid the first chicken egg.

In this light, both the egg and the chicken evolved simultaneously from birds who weren’t chickens and didn’t lay chicken eggs but gradually became more and more like chickens over time.”

The Process of Becoming

Let’s pretend that our calling is to become an attorney.  The first thing to do is go to law school, learning about case law and precedent and legal analysis,  except that a diploma does not an attorney make.

So we join a law firm where we’ll be initiated into the wonders of  real world legal practices and procedures, beginning to work as a lawyer, and yet attorney-hood is still to be attained.  (Hellooo bar exam!)

If we take another look at the-chicken-and-the-egg, we can see that during the time between the egg and the chicken itself is a process of evolution and maturation.  A chick is not yet a chicken.  (At least, not the chicken from the-chicken-and-the-egg scenario.)

Evolution!

The thing about evolution is that the process is not static, even if it is sometimes agonizingly incremental.  And the thing about personal evolution is that if you are not becoming one thing, you are becoming something else.

So when I finally accepted that I was “stuck”, I realized that I was picking another path by default!  Luckily, it also gave me a chance to really and viscerally get how essential taking action is.

…because without action our dreams are just regrets.