4 . The other night I had dinner with my friend Kim, who in midlife is trying to change her career. She has spent decades as a successful photographer, but she knows it’s time to do something different. What, however, is she qualified to do, besides photography? “I’m good at parties,” she told me with a shrug. “And parallel parking.” We refilled our wineglasses and laughed really hard as we dreamed up the various careers in which that particular combination might be useful.

Here’s a humbling exercise: Ask yourself what you’re good at, aside from the skills you use at work. After my conversation with Kim, I put this question to a handful of friends and got responses ranging from “finding restaurants for people” to “spotting terrific old chairs.” The more I think about my own answer to this question, the more confused I seem to get.

A year ago this month I left a job, and a career, that brought me great satisfaction for more than two decades. Can serendipity(意外惊喜)be a strategy? It certainly worked for me. I happened to find a field in which my skills and the requirements of the job were a Venn diagram (韦恩图) with near total overlap. Like most of my friends, I spent my 20s and 30s marching determinedly along my given path, working hard, with purpose, and by the time I reached my 40s, I was able to enjoy the fruits of my labor. Isn’t that the way the American Dream goes?

Here’s what you learn when you wake up from that dream: hubris (自负) is the unpleasant by-product of success. If you are really good at your job for a long enough time, you begin to believe that you can be good at any job and therefore can easily jump from one thing to another, switching horses in midstream. Examples of this mistaken thinking are everywhere, from the harmlessly frivolous (Dancing With the Stars) to the dangerously serious (the current presidency). As it turns out, humility is its own kind of skill; developing it hurts, but falling on your face hurts more.

Over the years a number of 20-somethings have come to me for advice, which I have dutifully given: Work hard, meet lots of people, say yes to many things. Don’t complain, put a smile on your face, and remind yourself that studying Foucault for four years in college might not prove to be particularly relevant in the working world. Swallow your pride and ask a lot of questions.

What I should be telling the young and ambitious is this: being really good at one thing is fantastic until it isn’t. The day may come, in my experience, will come, when you know you want to do, want to be, something else. For example, 20-somethings, one day you might want to appear on Dancing With the Stars. I’m not sure if Sean Spicer is a fool or a genius for turning down this opportunity for his first post-Administration performance. Maybe he’s not aware that Apolo Ohno was placed first on the show.

Or maybe you’ll want to run for President. Never mind that it was a President–Abraham Lincoln–who popularized the warning about switching horses in midstream. If you are a real estate tycoon and loud-mouthed TV star who made a name for yourself with a combination of instinct, bravado(虚张声势)and riding the wave of chaos you create everywhere you go, then who cares what Abe Lincoln said? The White House is the logical next career step.

Or, 20-somethings, maybe you’ll do both! At the same time! After all, doesn’t today’s White House sort of resemble Dancing With the Stars, if you squint(眯眼)hard and use your imagination? With experts and amateurs working together, trying to make it all look graceful while the audience alternatively laughs and cries?

So, folks, an assignment: Ask yourself what you’re good at. As for me, aside from what I most recently did for a living–writing, editing, managing people and showing up to meetings on time–my greatest strengths seem to be making vacation packing lists and remembering which houses in my town are on the market. So I have entered this next phase of my life with gratitude (for what I’ve accomplished), humility (about all that I don’t know) and fear (see random greatest strengths). I used to be filled with optimism: if Donald Trump could become President, anything seemed possible. But with each passing month, and each new failure, my optimism dims. If he wanted to try something new, wouldn’t Dancing With the Stars have been a wiser choice?

8 . ①What does it say about the future of meat when the country’s largest processor of chicken, pork, and beef buys a stake (股份) in a start-up that aims to “perfectly replace animal protein with plant protein”?

②Tyson Foods announced this week that it purchased a 5 percent stake in Beyond Meat, the Southern California-based food-tech start-up that made headlines earlier this year with its veggie burger that reportedly cooks and tastes like real beef.

③To be sure, Beyond Meat’s meatless creations have yet to take the country by storm. Although the 100 percent plant-based burgers have achieved plenty of positive press since they appeared for the first time in May, so far they’re only available at Whole Foods stores in seven states. Even though the company’s “chicken” strips, “beef” pies, and meatless frozen dinners are available nationwide, Beyond Meat is hardly a household name.

④That may be what makes the news of Tyson’s investment all the more noteworthy. While the two companies declined to give details about the deal, it’s doubtful that Tyson’s 5 percent stake made much of dent (凹陷) in the meat giant’s coffers (金库). The company posted $41.4 billion in sales last year; prior to the deal with Tyson, Beyond Meat had reportedly raised $64 million in project capital funding — about what Tyson earns before lunch on any given day.

⑤Tyson is doing pretty great. The company reported record third-quarter earnings per share in August and says that it expects overall meat production to increase 2 to 3 percent during the next financial year. But like a big oil company shelling out cash to invest in wind power, Tyson’s toe-in-the-water move to team up with a start-up devoted to bringing more plant-based protein to American dinner tables seems to suggest the meat industry is starting to see which way the winds are blowing.

⑥Sales of plant-based protein, which totaled an estimated $5 billion last year, continue to pale compared with the market for meat in America — but vegetarian alternatives to meat are booming, with sales growing at more than double the rate for food products overall. The steady drumbeat of news about the negative health impacts, environmental problems, and animal welfare concerns associated with meat consumption appears to be sinking in. According to a survey released in April, more than half of Americans surveyed said they plan to eat more plant-based foods in the coming year.