It could happen when they’re very young. It could happen when they’re at school. It could happen when they get their first job. It could happen in college. It could happen after their second marriage, when they’re in the middle of rebuilding their life. It might never happen.

It could happen early, and you hope it does. Your job, obviously, is to try to make it happen as soon as possible.

But you never know—you never know when they’re going to find their thing. In his influential book Mastery (copies available here), Robert Greene calls this a person’s “life’s task,” and he’s referring to the calling that lights someone up, that makes them feel alive, that gives them purpose and meaning and hopefully a career. As he explains it:

“At your birth a seed is planted. That seed is your uniqueness. It wants to grow, transform itself, and flower to its full potential. It has a natural, assertive energy to it. Your Life’s Task is to bring that seed to flower, to express your uniqueness through your work. You have a destiny to fulfill. The stronger you feel and maintain it—as a force, a voice, or in whatever form—the greater your chance for fulfilling this Life’s Task and achieving mastery.”

Like so many worthwhile things, this isn’t something a parent can give their children…but we can help them discover it.We can be patient and supportive. We can nudge. We can encourage. We can model the importance of following it ourselves (and how many parents fail to do that?). We can make sure that when they do find it, we don’t do what so many parents do—which is to criticize, stifle or undermine it.

We never know when they’ll find it, but we have got to make sure that they don’t give up on it…and neither do we.