The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna

“If you believe that you have something special inside of you, and you feel it’s about time you gave it a shot, honor that calling in some small way - today. Try and fail, but stick with something long enough to know.Įlle Luna closes her essay with a strong call to choose Must over Should, to have the courage to live the life that is calling to you: Pick a path the excites you, that seems like fun, but that also will challenge you and will compel you to mastery. What an authentic life needs is to be true to what you genuinely love and to make an art of it, to do it as well as you can. I have struggled, though, with the notion that we have some innate passion we have to find and follow. “What if who we are and what we do become one and the same? What if our work is so thoroughly autobiographical that we can’t parse the product from the person? What if our jobs are our careers and our callings?” –Elle Luna Most of us are guided by what we think we should do while ignoring the call of our deepest desires and what we must do to be fully alive. In this essay (and now in her book) Elle tells her story of finding her calling by resisting the path of Should and instead embracing the path of Must. I discovered it only today when Seth Godin linked to her new book that came from that essay. And she has a simple solution to escape them: Save up enough money to live free from your “shoulds” for a few months, then go for it.This epic essay by Elle Luna was posted almost a year ago. Rousseau wrote, “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” Luna knows exactly who forged those chains. Luna gently, but relentlessly encourages her readers to confront the really big decision they must make in their lives: between the things we should do to conform to society’s expectation of adult behavior and the thing we must do to become our authentic self. Her singular passion and particular insight inform every page of the book, which bursts with rainbow-colored, hand-drawn affirmations and watercolor illustrations. Luna left behind enviable design jobs at Mailbox, Uber and IDEO to focus full time on her personal art and writing in 2013. Written and lavishly illustrated by Elle Luna, the book is a personal description of her journey from a career to a calling.

Now comes The Crossroads of Should and Must, a handbook to finding and following your passion. A generation in the ’70s graduated college with What Color Is Your Parachute? In the ’90s, we were told to Do What You Love, the Money Will Follow. Published by Workman Publishing Company, Įvery generation gets a self-help book to call its own.

The Crossroads of Should and Must by Elle Luna