Stop Waiting for a Sign: How to Build Meaning (and Guard Your Life) Without Magic
If you hang around long enough in self-help land, you’ll meet two seductive ideas. One: the universe sends signs. Two: your perfect path will reveal itself if you “find your passion.” I’ve chased both. I’ve looked for patterns in coincidences, begged the sky for direction, and burned cycles waiting for a tidal wave of certainty to pick me up and carry me to “my thing.”
Here’s where I’ve landed after a few decades, a collapse, and a rebuild: meaning isn’t waiting to be discovered like buried treasure, and your passion won’t arrive like a soulmate with perfect timing. Meaning and passion are grown - by choosing, practicing, and protecting the life in front of you.
The coincidence itch (and what it’s good for)
I love a good coincidence story. We all do. The same song in two cities, the random seatmate who knows your cousin, the number that keeps showing up like a wink. We experience a ripple - surely this means something - and our pattern-hungry brains start connecting dots.
There’s nothing wrong with that. The machinery that spots patterns is the same machinery that helped us learn language, science, and how not to touch hot pans twice. The trouble begins when we outsource agency to the pattern - when we won’t commit until the sky writes our name in contrails.
Coincidences can be delightful. They can even be useful - a nudge to pay attention, to ask a question, to say yes to a conversation. But they’re lousy strategy. If I had waited for “proof” to get sober, to train consistently, to build community outside of nightlife, I’d still be refreshing my feelings, looking for omens, calling it fate when what I needed was a calendar and a friend.
Passion isn’t found. It’s cultivated.
The “find your passion” myth breaks lives softly. It tells you there is a perfect fit out there for you - and you’ll know it by the overwhelming emotion you feel when you encounter it. The second-order effect is brutal: when the thing you’re trying gets hard (and it always does), you assume it wasn’t your passion after all, and you bail. You set off for the next lightning strike. Rinse, repeat, get lonelier.
The growth-mindset alternative is less romantic and far more resilient: interest becomes passion through exposure, effort, and identity. Dip your toe. If it’s interesting, keep showing up. Expect friction. Expect boredom. Expect the week where it all feels sticky. Keep going. Passion isn’t the absence of difficulty; it’s the willingness to tolerate difficulty because the thing is starting to matter to you.
I didn’t “find” writing. I wrote badly, publicly, repeatedly, and then not-as-badly. I didn’t “find” zone-2 running. I shuffled slowly, counted breaths, got bored, and learned to love the boredom because the afterglow steadied my mind. The verb matters. Grow a practice, and it will grow you back.
The peril of magical thinking (especially for queer men right now)
There’s another reason I’m suspicious of the wait-for-a-sign mindset: it leaves too much space for drift, and drift is a risk. In parts of our community, meth/chemsex has threaded itself through weekends, friend groups, and holidays so silently that “normal” got redefined while we were busy pretending we were fine. Shame keeps us quiet; quiet keeps us stuck.
I don’t write that from a pulpit. I write it as someone who knows the undertow of “just this once,” how quickly it becomes isolation by inches. It’s easy to blame individual weakness; it’s harder and truer to admit the system reinforces the spiral - tourism economies, silence in leadership, patchy services, beds we don’t fund, moralising instead of care.
What cuts across shame and drift? Deliberate containers for meaning. People on your calendar. Plans with daylight. Commitments you can keep even when your mood lies to you. Hobbies that require you to show up in person. Service that pulls you out of your own head. These are not quaint extras; they’re protective factors. They’re also completely incompatible with waiting for a cosmic telegram.
Build a bias toward small, real choices
If coincidences are a curio cabinet, choices are a workbench. Here’s how I’ve moved from “Is this a sign?” to “This is my next right step”:
Shrink the unit of decision. “Write a book” is paralysing; “write 250 words at 7:30 a.m. after coffee with Sam” is doable.
Name the season. “This month is for reps, not results.” When the goal is consistency, every session you show up for is a win. Meaning accrues.
Pick a place. Humans are spatial. Same café table, same bench by the river, same squat rack. Locations become anchors when motivation wobbles.
Invite one person. The fastest way to make something sticky is to make it shared. Parallel play; co-errands; duo workouts; choir on Thursdays. Your nervous system recognises “belonging” faster than it recognises “discipline.”
Close loops publicly. “Posted the draft.” “Made the meeting.” “Day 12 done.” Not for applause; for identity. You’re voting for the story you’re telling about yourself.
Meaning vs. magic
I still love the poetry of coincidence. I notice numbers. I smile when a random playlist lands the exact song for my exact mood. But when it comes to building a life, I don’t wait to be chosen. I choose. I don’t interpret discomfort as a sign to quit. I call it a normal phase of learning. I don’t chase passion like a soulmate. I pick an interest, invest, and let passion catch up.
And on the hard topic we avoid: if meth has brushed your circle or your weekend, you don’t need to be shamed into change or magically inspired out of it. You need daylight plans. Beds. Non-judgmental help. Elders with lived experience at the table. Friends who will sit with you in the boring hours. A community willing to say out loud what’s been happening and build better options than silence.
Start here (this week, not someday)
Choose one practice to grow for six weeks. Small dose, same time, three days a week. Expect week three to wobble. Keep going.
Put two connection containers in your calendar: one parallel-play hour; one walk with a friend. Protect them like you would a scan or a flight.
If your weekend includes risk you don’t like, add daylight. Book a Saturday morning plan you wouldn’t want to miss. Respect your future self by showing up for it.
Write one paragraph about what you want your life to feel like at 4 p.m. most days. Use that as your filter for what gets your energy at 9 a.m.
Where I land
Meaning isn’t a code to crack; it’s a muscle to work. Passion isn’t a soulmate; it’s a relationship you build. Coincidences can delight you. They just don’t get to steer.
The life I can trust at 4:30 p.m. comes from the non-mystical stuff I did at 4:30 a.m.: movement, words on a page, a text to a friend, the next unglamorous step. That’s not the universe whispering. That’s me deciding. The magic, if there is any, tends to show up after the choice, not before.
Stop waiting for a sign. Be the one.