Purpose is the tinder. Passion sparks the flame.

"Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us, but we can't strike them all by ourselves."

On The Cusp is about becoming the next version of ourselves. That means experimenting with the breadth of our interests, exploring the depths of anything that captures our imagination, and learning to embrace uncertainty along the way.

Welcome! This is letter #67.

Glass under glass, captured on Kodak Portra 400 film

We sidled up to the Amsterdam hotel bar, perched on its tufted red leather stools, and waited to catch our bartender’s gaze.

Jenever is a juniper-flavored spirit, like gin, that happens to be a Dutch specialty. When we checked in earlier that day, we’d heard about the free daily tastings held between five and six each evening.

When the bartender made his way over, this promise was on our minds. “We missed today’s jenever tasting,” my boyfriend said, “but if you’re not too busy, we’d love to partake.” It was a weeknight, and the bar was almost empty. “We’re happy to pay, obviously,” he added for good measure.

Our bartender, a trim blond man in his early thirties, looked down his nose at us. “Of course,” he replied, his words affirmative but his tone disdainful.

Over the next twenty minutes, he dutifully brought us each required component of the tasting, but we couldn’t escape the impression that the task caused him great psychic pain. He averted eye contact, provided bare-minimum answers to our follow-up questions, and focused all his attention on cocktails for the bar’s other two patrons.

After he made the third pour and tossed a few mixers our way, we confirmed each other’s impression in hushed voices: “This guy hates us.”

We tried to figure out where we went wrong: did he take us for arrogant Americans who hadn’t respected the allotted tasting hour? Did he think we were hoping to score free drinks? Or maybe he was offended that we offered to pay.

We wrapped up our tasting in a hurry and asked for the bill. He waved his hand dismissively.

“The tasting is free,” he said. “But come back another night and have a real drink.” He motioned toward the collection of tiny leather-bound booklets that served as menus. “This tasting is for tourists. Cocktails are what we do best.”

That Saturday night, we were ready to experience Amsterdam’s famous nightlife. I’d gotten a burgundy manicure for the occasion, and smoothed out the one nice dress I’d managed to stuff into my suitcase. My boyfriend, an early-to-bed type, figured that a little caffeine was in order.

“I guess we could try the hotel bar,” I said. We’d be in and out, so the bartender couldn’t ruin our night. My boyfriend headed downstairs to order me something crisp and refreshing while I finished getting dressed.

Five minutes later, I arrived downstairs to find him chatting with the same bartender like old friends, his own espresso martini in hand, in a bar buzzing with activity. “Try your drink!” they both goaded me when I sat down, eager to see my reaction. My cocktail was a combination of rum, sherry, vanilla cherry tomato, and passion fruit—and it was exceptional. “The cherry tomato powder is dusted along the rim,” the bartender noted, and I tasted it on its own, my eyes popping at its purity and intensity.

“Right?” he beamed, and we started talking shop. Upon mentioning that one of his cocktails featured aged gouda (!), he brought us a thimbleful of liquid to try. Sure enough, amidst the tequila, sorrel, St-Germain, and oregano, there it was: the rich umami essence of gouda cheese.

By this point, my boyfriend had finished his first drink. “If you’re looking for caffeine, an espresso martini is fine,” the bartender said, “but allow me to suggest something more interesting.” He returned with a brew of gin, bitters, oat, vermouth, and coffee, topped with a popsicle stick dolloped with caramelized yogurt.

“Take a sip of the drink on its own,” he instructed, “and then again, this time tasting the yogurt first.” We complied, and were shocked by the two completely different experiences—as he delighted in our reactions.

After paying our bill and braving the October chill, we started laughing. It turns out that our bartender didn’t hate us at all! He simply couldn’t bear the thought of doing anything perfunctory when he could be doing something else with verve.

Honestly, that seemed perfectly rational. If you manage to find that kind of passion for your work, why would you ever settle for anything less?

In early September 2022, I didn’t yet know that my mom’s cancer had returned, which meant I was busy contemplating another big issue—the future of my financial planning career—in blissful ignorance.

I’d been promoted earlier that year, a change that came with my own client base and a steep learning curve. “The first year as lead planner is always hard,” people kept telling me. One firm owner said he recommended that all his new lead planners start therapy when they make the transition.

For most of 2022, I clung to this information like a security blanket. It was reassurance that my misery wasn’t a problem. It was normal, and would dissipate if I waited patiently.

It was in this vulnerable state that I read Cal Newport’s book So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love. It argues that developing a valuable skillset gives you the career capital to structure your work in a way that produces more predictable, durable satisfaction than if you’d chased your passions.

I’m a big fan of Newport’s work, and figured that if anyone could convince me that my flagging enjoyment wasn’t a glaring red flag, it might be Cal. I was walking steadfastly and responsibly in the direction of skill acquisition and career capital; I wanted Cal to reassure me that I’d be happier at work soon.

That never happened, but Newport’s voice remained in my head when it was time to make my next career move.

When Hoda Kotb left the Today show after almost three decades at NBC, she used this metaphor to describe her transition: “I love the term repotting,” she said. “It’s like you’re pulled up by your very roots, your foundation, everything that grounds you, and your roots are in the air and you’re scared. ‘Where am I going to land?’ ”

After leaving financial planning and taking a sabbatical, I tried to repot myself, too. This year, I experimented with a foray into web design, which checked every box I thought I wanted in my next job: technically challenging and creative, engaging and entrepreneurial.

In Love Actually, the lovestruck kid played by Thomas Sangster reveals his plan (to stepdad Liam Neeson) for making his school crush fall for him: sign up to play drums in the school’s Christmas performance.

“I think it’s brilliant. I think it’s stellar. Apart from the one obvious tiny little baby little hiccup,” Neeson says.

“That I don’t play a musical instrument,” Sangster responds.

“Yessir.”

“A tiny, insignificant detail.”

When it came to my hopeful next career, my own “tiny, insignificant detail” was that the effort was undertaken entirely with my head—thanks to perfectly rational advice like Newport’s—and not with my heart. I may have been passionate about designing and building my own website, but there was no amount of skill acquisition that produced the same spark for client work. And as I’d already learned by the end of my financial planning career: no spark, no flame.

Given the privilege of choice, what I really wanted was to be the version of our Amsterdam bartender that showed up the second night: the one who takes time out of a busy shift to explain the embellishments adorning a drink, and delights in distilling the flavors of a cheese plate into a cocktail glass.

I never wanted to be the guy who completes a jenever tasting dead-eyed and dutifully, just because it appears somewhere on his list of job responsibilities.

Last weekend, I watched Like Water for Chocolate, the movie adaptation of Laura Esquivel’s novel.

I was floored by one scene in particular, in which family doctor John Brown speaks to protagonist Tita after her mental breakdown. It’s clear that she’s lost all sense of purpose, and he seeks to help her find it again.

In Esquivel’s words:

Each of us is born with a box of matches inside us, but we can't strike them all by ourselves; we need oxygen and a candle to help. In this case, the oxygen for example, would come from the breath of the person you love; the candle would be any kind of food, music, caress, word, or sound that engenders the explosion that lights one of the matches. For a moment we are dazzled by an intense emotion. A pleasant warmth grows within us, fading slowly as time goes by, until a new explosion comes along to revive it. Each person has to discover what will set off those explosions in order to live, since the combustion that occurs when one of them is ignited is what nourishes the soul. That fire, in short, is its food. If one doesn't find out in time what will set off these explosions, the box of matches dampens, and not a single match will ever be lighted.

Sometimes, the oxygen and candle appear when you least expect them to.

When I went abroad this fall, I slashed all the inputs of my “normal” life—appointments, calls, texts, emails, the Internet, social media. Quieting that noise allowed my inner compass to pull me toward a new professional obsession.

Following your inner compass, though, doesn’t guarantee a straight path to professional bliss.

Lily King’s novel Writers & Lovers follows 31-year-old aspiring author Casey Peabody through a moment of personal and professional transition. King’s prose is beautiful and insightful, but for three-quarters of the book, I found the plot to be slow-going and, honestly, pretty sad.

Most of Casey’s friends have given up their writing dreams, and issues with her day job, romantic life, and health all conspire to snuff out the faint pilot light flickering inside her. I became increasingly worried that things wouldn’t turn around for her, just like I was secretly worried that they wouldn’t turn around for me, either.

But the final stretch of the book showed Casey’s dogged efforts paying off in ways that felt cathartic but believable, in something akin to James Clear’s ice cube analogy: “Complaining about not achieving success despite working hard is like complaining about an ice cube not melting when you heated it from twenty-five to thirty-one degrees. Your work was not wasted; it was just being stored. All the action happens at thirty-two degrees.”

I felt elated reading the novel’s last page, and for some reason, that feeling drove me to pick up The Life You Were Born to Live, a book about numerology—yes, numerology—that was in my mom’s bedroom when she died.

I had placed it in the “donate” pile before her friend Vicki urged me to keep it: “Flip through it first,” she said. “She left messages for you and your brother in there.”

Your number, the book says, is based on some very simple math involving the month, day, and year of your birth. (Apparently, I’m a 36/9.) There were three dog-eared pages in the book, each bearing my mom’s handwriting in green ballpoint pen: one with her name, one with mine, and one with my brother’s. Each section was studiously underlined, highlighting the challenges that the book’s author—and my mom—identified for each of us.

The major challenge for 36/9s is “finding out what they really feel in contrast to what they think they ‘should’ feel,” the author writes. “Since 36/9s aim for the ideal rather than for what is real for them, the Law of Intuition can help them reconnect with the wisest and most loving guide they can find for their own life: their inner wisdom.”

As little as I believe in numerology, and as much as I believe in rationality, lately I’ve been finding more truth in those plain, simple sentences—and in the stories of Tita and Casey Peabody—than I used to find in something like Cal Newport’s exhaustive book-length argument against following your passion.

So after years of making career choices on the basis of reason over passion, I’m finally ready to flip that dynamic, even if it means operating on faith more than I’m comfortable with.

Because at the end of the day, when purpose provides the tinder and passion provides the spark, I have to believe that there’s a strong chance of creating a durable flame.

I’ll see you back here in January, with news of a big adventure on the horizon—plus a new name and direction for this newsletter! ✨

As always, I’d love to hear from you. What’s captured your imagination lately?

Warmly,
Maddie