By Mary Jaksch
What is the one most important thing in your life? Can you answer without hesitation?
I recently asked Cassandra, a friend of mine, and she immediately shot back the answer: “Horses!” (She is twelve years old and already an experienced rider with amazing talent). Maybe you also have something in your life that is obviously the one most important thing. Or maybe it’s difficult for you to pinpoint that one thing. That’s how it is for me.
A while ago I read an article about focusing on One Thing in life. The post was based on a film clip. It’s a scene where Curly – a tough cowboy played by Jack Palance – offers his dim sidekick Mitch some advice on life:
Curly: Do you know what the secret of life is?
Curly: This. [holds up one finger]
Mitch: Your finger?
Curly: One thing. Just one thing. You stick to that and the rest don’t mean shit.
Mitch: But what is the “one thing?”
Curly: [smiles] That’s what you have to find out.
Since seeing the clip, I couldn’t get the question out of my mind: “What is the One Thing in my life?”
The difficulty is that I have more than one passion. I love Zen teaching, I love writing, I love the company of family and friends, I love being in the outdoors.
What about your life? What are your passions?
I’ve always had a spread of passions in my life.
I don’t know if you have ever taken part in a goal setting seminar. I have, and it was a puzzling experience. The facilitator asked us to list everything that is important in our life and then to highlight the ONE THING that is most important to us. And he stated that if you don’t have just one thing in life, you won’t get anywhere. I could find three things – but I couldn’t pinpoint the One Thing.
After seeing the movie clip with Curly’s injunction, I kept on thinking, “There must be ONE THING in my life that’s the fundamental driver. What is it?”
In the end I found it. Tucked away. Deep underneath everything. I had been looking in the wrong places. I had been looking for it amongst my passions. I’ll tell you what I found in a moment, but first I want to describe how I got there. The question I asked in order to find the One Thing was, “What were my moments of greatest joy?”
What I got in response was a series of memory clips: Camping out under the desert moon with my son, a tender embrace with my partner, falling about on the beach with my young friends, a moment of hilarity in the midst of a silent Zen retreat, sharing with close friends, deep encounters with my students, and moments of creative excitement while writing.
What memories do you get in response?
Now search for a theme that connects those memories. What is the central theme?
When I looked for a central theme of these memories, what I found was: intimacy. In my life intimacy is the One Thing that matters most! I’m not talking of sexual intimacy. What I mean by ‘intimacy’ are the moments of deep connection.
What about your life? What is the central theme in your life?
The One Thing is not a goal in life, it’s our central aspiration. Let me unpack that a little: goals are the concrete expression of our ambition. An ambition is a wish to be different from how we are now. Whereas an aspiration is the wish to be the fullest expression of who we really are. For example, one of my aspirations is to connect deeply with everyone I meet. It’s an impossible aspiration! Impossible to fulfill. That’s the nature of aspirations. We can never reach them. They are the stars by which we navigate through life
Once you find that One Thing, your central aspiration, there is a further important question:
What does the One Thing demand of your life?
The One Thing is like a yardstick. We can hold it up to any area in our life and see whether our life measures up. Because if our life is to be in harmony, we need to be in line with the One Thing.
When I held up intimacy against my activities in life, I got some unexpected results. For example, I enjoy working in tandem with others. I enjoy creating joint projects. However, to be in line with my central aspiration, intimacy, I need to focus on the relationship with my partners, and not on the outcome of a particular joint venture. Quite simply, if I tried to make my luck on the back of others, I would be unhappy. My aspiration of intimacy demands that I focus on the well-being of others, just as much as on my own.
Maybe your One Thing also demands something of your life. What is that demand?
Once you have found what your One Thing is, you can use it to look for direction. For example, if you have a new opportunity in life, you can hold it up against your One Thing and ask, “Is this in line with the One Thing in my life, or not?” Straightaway, you can get a sense whether the new venture will bring you joy or distress.
Well then, what is your ONE THING?
***
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I really enjoyed reading your article.
A long time ago someone told me that to find the real meaning to your life you have to keep looking for the “burning question why”.
Always looking for that burning desire can help you identify that ONE THING in your life.
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I love this post. I hadn’t ever thought of this specific question. After reading this I discovered my “one thing” is also intimacy. It is what I write about, talk about, and seek more than anything else. Thank you for the insight.
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This is a nice post, but I’d like to point out that basing key parts of your life view on a movie clip is, well, suspect. It’s just a movie. It’s not necessarily real. Is life really about just one thing? Sez who? You might try reading “Doing Nothing,” which gives an interesting history of the work ethic.
I really like this post. I’ve always been a fan of the “one thing” philosophy. Understanding what one thing is most important in your life is, in my opinion, essential to happiness. I would have to say that my “one thing” is the same as yours, but writing takes a close second. Thanks.
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My “one thing” is: to be happy. No matter what is going on in my life, to be happy. And part of that is learning to listen to my gut and keeping my own council. I am willing to listen to others advice, but weighed against my “one thing” I will make the decision that stays in line with that.
I know what it should be: awareness. Awareness of the here and now, of my moment to moment mind and of the moment to moment minds around me.
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I wondered where this article was going until I read the distinction between goals/ambitions and aspiration!
Thank you for that insightful pointer alone!
It makes perfect sense to me – it would be impossible to have one goal / one ambition… after all I have already had many of those and achieved many of them… AND discovering just how meaningless they can be once achieved!
Now *aspiration* is another thing altogether, everything in my life can be seen in light of my aspiration and every moment has the potential to be complete and whole.
Herein lies happiness!
Many thanks.
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As I was reading this, I was thinking about City Slickers as well, before I got to that part! A very appropriate clip.
Not that we should necessarily take advice from a movie, but a clip can be a good way of visualizing and remembering something. (As long as we agree with it, of course.)
Though in the sequel, they said there were two things: whatever the one thing is, and gold!
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Mary, “The one thing” can turn into “the few things” so quickly for me…I don’t even know where to begin. But I suspect that is the purpose of this post, to make you reflect, and hence of this entire blog and it’s challenging topics.
The moment I think I figured what my one thing is, I see that is so embedded into the next one thing that is difficult but not impossible to breakdown and in that way find the right sequence and priority of what should have importance.
I often wonder if that one thing is the thing we want or the one thing we need.
I believe most of us have found personal growth in situations we would never wish on others and would definitely think twice about going through it again if it was up to us.
I’m not so sure that the one thing we think is the most important, really is.
Mary,
I enjoyed this post. As I was reading about your “one thing,” I was wondering if you find intimacy in blogging?
Personally, I find intimacy within my own thoughts when I write but I do not gain any sense of intimacy with people unless I am physically in their presence.
For example, as I write this sentence, I am actually “talking” to myself and not really to you, although I have addressed this comment to you in name.
While I may share intimate thoughts online, the internet is the antithesis of intimacy, at least in a physical sense.
Perhaps your intimacy desire is fulfilled by blogging in a spiritual sense but not in a physical sense?
Wouldn’t it be wonderful to sit in a room and chat rather than post blog articles and blog comments?
Oh yeah, my “one thing” is thinking. Thanks for provoking thought, as usual…
“When the mind is thinking it is talking to itself.” ~ Plato
I was going to say I don’t know, but as I scrolled down the page, the word jumped into my mind: Creation (verb).
Creation is at the root of all my passions. I write, I craft, I create websites (and help other people do so). I get a crazy thrill each time I create a new WordPress blog, because it wasn’t there before. I marvel at being able to move sidebars. While I don’t have a passion for cooking, I enjoy it a lot more than my husband does.
Creation.
Are there other important things in my life not driven by creation? Definitely. Is creation the most important thing? I don’t know. But it’s the root of the things that I’m most passionate about.
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my one thing is also creativity, or creation, as ruth puts it. i’m a songwriter, poet, blogger, musician and performer — with a little photography and beadwork on the side. though writing, in its various forms, has been the sustaining creative current throughout my life, it evolves and other creative projects and skills are added. none of which, i might mention, have anything to do with my dayjob.
my most recent project is learning to engineer and produce my own recordings. getting pretty good at it, too, and am now working with other creative friends to produce their projects. and if you’d asked me five years ago whether i’d ever become good at something like protools, i would’ve just laughed.
of course, doing all this means getting up at 4am every day. weekends included. being single and child-free certainly helps!
ps — thanks for tweeting about the comment thread on this post. i might not have seen it otherwise, and it’s given me a nice moment of contemplate this morning.
Great post Mary! I feel the same as you do, I have far too many things in my life to say that just one of them is my one thing – which is why I also found it very interesting to read what you discovered.
So I had a think about it myself, what where my moments of greatest joy?
They’re all to be found either during deep music listening/dancing/playing sessions, or deep moments of present-mind awareness on sesshin. I also, like Ruth and Jackie, thrive on creativity, being a musician, engineer, and software developer… It’s very hard to find the root of all of these joys, but I think the word ‘freedom’ comes closest. Music certainly sets me free of myself, the moment sets me free of myself, and I get the most joy out of creating when it’s not being judged by anyone – like when I freestyle the music and don’t hit the record button.
So I guess my one thing boils down to freedom! The soil in which each entry in my ever-growing list of passions can grow.
Really a great thought-provoking post!
great post Mary.
I really like the idea of looking for the common thread between the many “passions” I have.
I’ve always thought of myself as a serial “passioner” – delving deep from one passion to another – work to play to work to play.
Thanks again for this post.
deb
Nice post! I also have lots of interests and find it difficult to pin point the one thing for me… but thanks to your article even before i could finish, it dawned on me that my one thing is “always being true to myself”. I can do many things but still each one is the one thing for me as long as my heart is in it.
Beautiful! You described so well what I think is the key to discovering your core needs. Reminds me of the method described in a book I read many years ago called Getting Past OK by Richard Brodie. The author’s technique was very similar.
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That is very easy question for me. Peace of mind is the most important thing for me. When my mind is peaceful. I can be helpful to others and myself. When my mind is burning – I am useless. Being useless is my biggest nightmare I hope will never come true.
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“I’ve always had a spread of passions in my life.”
Me too!
The question is what do they have in common?
That might be the One Thing (or point at it).
I’ve asked myself this. The answer is: God. I don’t mean any specific deity, but rather, The Source of All That Is. My relationship with God (Source/Spirit/Universal Consciousness, etc.) has been the one constant, the one thing that kept me alive through some very harrowing times, the one thing that keeps me going now. I seek unity with Source, on the deepest, most intimate level possible.
Creativity is a secondary passion, but I’m coming to understand more and more that creativity, that is, creation, is a direct aspect of Source…
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Fantastic article, Mary. Until the past few years, I always thought of the one thing as some kind of career calling. I would always get confused because I am passionate about a number of things – travel, story telling, social justice, gender equality. But one day I read about looking beneath your passions for the one thing and then I understood that the central need in my life is for INSPIRATION. What this demands of my life is trying new things, spending time with other cultures, talking to different people, reading widely, exploring my own ideas in my writing and not letting life get stale and same old. I think this is also why I don’t like to live any one place or do any one job for too long. I get bored easily, and then I get depressed.
Thanks for articulating this idea so clearly. I am sure it will be a revelation for some people, and today it was a confirmation for me.
Kelly
Thank you for this post =) Keep writing!
my ONE thing..without any doubt is..God =)
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Love this post. Answer: my daughter. Only – I can’t focus on her, or, like a kitten, she’ll run away. She can’t be the center of my world, and neither can my man, or they’ll feel the weight of it. So – one thing: Peace. Global, personal, how corny, and yet – that’s what I want. Thanks, Sarah
I really enjoyed the post. That scene from City Slickers always stayed with me as well. It starts as a question and then turns to realization over time.
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“What is the one most important thing in your life? Can you answer without hesitation?”
No, I can’t answer without hesitation…maybe I used to think I knew what that one thing was but now I don’t know!
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Hi Diana!
Yes – sometimes our knowledge of what our ONE THING is comes and goes. It’s like we’re sometimes in a phase of re-focusing. During that phase we just don’t know what it is.
Yes, well, I’m waiting… I know it will come but I also know that a couple things have to come to fruition before I will know.
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“One thing”! Interesting. I still have difficulty in knowing what my “One thing” would be?… I’d say happiness, and then when I think of happiness, I think of ALL the things that make me happy..mainly helping others, solving other’s problems, counsel them and most important, seeing a smile on other’s faces… that’s what makes me happy.. Also, on the other hand there are these things that make me happy: writing, dancing and being with friends.
I cant’ decide what’s that One thing in my life.. or maybe is it happiness? I think it is… cz I realise when I havn’t helped sumone in need, and i see sad faces, i kinda get depressed myself… But again..is this really my one thing????
what do you think??
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I asked myself few days ago what one thing will i like to do if it is the last day of my life. and i got my answer. I want to make everyone around me happy specially my parents.
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