Like What You Do

By Jessica Lake

Who has not heard of the aphorism,

“It’s not so much doing what you like as liking what you do.”

That saying has always resonated with me. I assumed it reflected a philosophy of life—a conscious choice to make the best of whatever circumstances I found myself in. Looking back, I no longer think that is why it felt so true.

I now suspect it described something much deeper.

For most of my life I believed I was simply adaptable. When circumstances changed, I changed with them. When one path closed, I looked for another. I rarely mourned what I left behind. Instead, I became curious about what might emerge under the new constraints. I thought this was merely a matter of temperament.

Now I wonder whether it was evidence of an underlying cognitive architecture.

This paper is not about resilience or optimism. It is an attempt to understand why adaptability has always felt more natural to me than choosing a destination and pursuing it relentlessly. I believe the answer lies not in my personality, but in the way my semantic mind generates behavior. What I once accepted as a philosophy of life may instead be the native operating principle of my executive function.

I had a cousin who outlived the rest of his family. Nearly everyone died young from cancer. When he was young, he loved skiing, so he left home, moved to Colorado, and became a bartender at a ski resort. He skied, and he had a wonderful time. But there was no future in it, so as he got older he moved on to something else.

I loved skiing too. But the snow in New England isn’t very good. The mountains are far away, the trails are crowded, and it costs money. So I gave up skiing and looked for something else.

That’s when I started martial arts. It just needed space to work out. Wherever you were, you could practice. Once I started teaching, it didn’t cost me anything. I ended up doing that for about twenty-three years.

It never occurred to me to move—to leave my family and go off on my own.

So I adapted.

It’s becoming obvious that this is how I live my life—or maybe more accurately, how I decide to respond to the world. I use Constraint Convergence.

When reality changes and new constraints are placed on me, I adapt. Then I wait, almost with pleasure, to see what emerges.

By definition, I have no ambition other than to live—to survive. I respond to whatever the world throws at me.

I don’t decide.

I become.

I emerge.

I started martial arts in college because my brother asked me to.

They needed more students; otherwise the karate club was going to close.

So I said yes.

Put that in your pipe and smoke it.

My father said, “Be an engineer. You’ll always have a job.” He placed a constraint on me. What emerged was an engineer. I’ve always taken pride in being able to build something worthwhile with very little.

So what does this mean?

I stayed with martial arts because now I had a master I could please. I enjoyed being a good student. I learned to take pleasure in that. It also gave me status. In martial arts, status comes from tenure, ability, and endurance.

One way of looking at my life is through boundaries. Someone pushes, and I adapt.

Never fight for what you believe in.

Advice meant for neurotypical people doesn’t work very well for me. Instead, I have to remember who I am.

There’s that saying again: It’s not so much doing what you like as liking what you do.

And I guess I really did take it to heart.

Whatever I’m given, I learn how to enjoy it.

But I also learned never to really decide. Just let things happen and see what comes out of them.

Though even that’s not true.

Ah, it’s so hard to separate.

Like deciding to live out of a car—that’s a decision.

But the decision comes from asking a different question.

How little can I live on?

How small a footprint can I leave on the world?

How small can I really become?

My karate instructor was the same way. Whatever he asked, I did.

He asked me to do a number of things that limited what I wanted, and again, without much thought, I said, “Yes, sir.”

I had the opportunity to become captain of the American team and compete at another world championship. He asked me not to because he was having a disagreement with the organizers.

And so I said, “Yes, sir.”

No.

I’ve always lived in small spaces. I’ve always tried to get by with the minimum.

The only times I didn’t were when someone else asked me to.

I needed a car. My father spoke to someone and got me a wonderful deal on a nice car, so I bought it.

Years later I needed another car. Again my father knew someone, and I ended up with a beautiful pickup truck.

Those are the kinds of decisions I make.

It’s hard to tell the difference between someone who allows themselves to live simply and someone who has surrendered.

One person looks at making life as simple as possible—with as few complications as possible—and sees freedom.

Another looks at exactly the same life and sees homelessness.

I still don’t know how to understand that.

I don’t know what it means.

Actually…

I think I do.

The answer is very, very simple.

I’m eighteen years old.

My father asks me what I want to do with my life.

He didn’t actually phrase it that way.

“What do you like?”

“What kind of future do you see?”

I didn’t have an answer.

I don’t think—

I don’t think I think that way.

What I am is someone who wants to be useful.

Someone who wants to be perfect.

Basically…

Tell me who to be.