“A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.

Specialization is for insects.”

— Robert A. Heinlein

Growing up, I was curious about everything. Well, I still am. I love stories and photography and art and psychology and philosophy and... the list is endless.

The quote above has been following me around for years. Every time I feel the pressure to “pick a lane,” to reduce myself to a single label or niche, it rings louder in my head. And maybe it’s because I’ve never had just one interest.

From the moment we’re asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up?,” the world starts nudging us toward neat definitions. Doctor. Lawyer. Artist. Engineer. Pick one. Master it. Stay there. But what if I don’t want to?

Even now, I still feel like I’m stretching in different directions and I think I have stopped seeing that as a flaw. The world we live in today absolutely loves a specialist. You’re easier to market that way. Simpler to explain. But the thing is: people aren’t meant to be simple. And I think more of us are multipotentialites than we let on.

There’s a word for this: polymath. A person of wide knowledge or learning. Remember Da Vinci? He painted masterpieces, studied anatomy, designed machines, and scribbled strange, beautiful thoughts in his notebooks.

He wasn’t confused about life. He was curious. He was unwilling to be just one thing. Dare I say, he was ungovernable.

And maybe that’s the point.

You don’t have to choose one path. You’re allowed to explore many. You can build a life that looks like chaos on paper but feels like freedom in your soul. You can write a poem one day, fix a bike the next, learn to code the week after, and still be you. It’s not inconsistency. It’s expansion.

I’m not anti-specialization. If you love one thing and want to go deep, do it.

But don’t let a world obsessed with clarity stop you from being complex. Curiosity is not confusion. Let curiosity define you, not the world’s expectations.

So here are the questions I keep coming back to:

What would your life look like if no one ever told you to pick just one thing?
What if your curiosity was the point, not the problem?
How many lives could you live if the rules never mattered?