This is going to be a day very heavy on posts, for those of you that read this space regularly. Just FYI. Both of you have been warned.
We had a Branch Managers’ conference at City 1st Mortgage Services the last couple days, and it was a very good set of meetings. Some of them, I must be frank, were not useful to me and led to a greater Facebook/Twitter/email output for those hours than might otherwise have been expected. But the majority was good and some parts were great.
One part that was great – but probably not for the reasons the presenter intended – was the part about “Finding Your Passion”. This is a self-help guru’s mantra, and I suppose it has some validity for 22-year-olds that don’t really have much in their life that can’t be tossed in a heap while they pursue something else. I guess it was really good for some of the people there. Me? I find that it annoyed the crap out of me.
I’m 40. I have eight children and a business that tentatively supports four different families. I have obligations that that I cannot run out on to “follow my passion”, whatever that might mean today. Folks, you’ve read my blog. I get passionate about EVERYTHING. I have had passionate conversations about the incandescent light bulb, extra-chunky spaghetti sauce, and the Horsehead Nebula. In the same hour. How do I follow that, exactly?
What I find is that there are things I have to do, things I committed to do because they are the right things to do, that I do not want to do. I do not want to spend the hour from 2130 to 2230 going around my house with white plastic garbage bags picking things up off the floor, but I did it last night, because it was the right thing to do. I was, in a general sense, passionate about it, too, but somehow I think Tony Robbins wouldn’t have approved.
Here’s what I think. I think that you should, generally, try to do for a living something you like to do. I think you should choose, for leisure activities, things that you have a natural affinity for. I think that if you do this, it will help you perform better.
I also think that sometimes, even a lot of the time, if you are a responsible person, you will have to do things about which you are not naturally passionate. You will take jobs you don’t like. You will accept assignments that don’t thrill you. Becoming a worthwhile person means that you have to act like an ant periodically, and not like a grasshopper. This is hard. No doubt my membership in the Free Spirit Guild is being revoked as you read this. But I believe it to be so.
I think you can be passionate about hard things, even the things you despise doing. I really do believe this. I embarked about four months ago on a journey to see if I could be happy all the time, no matter what. So far, the results are quite positive, positive enough that I believe the hypothesis to be proved. I’m still not happy all the time. But I know that I could be, and that I should be. And that I will be. I’m just not good enough yet.
So I’d revise the standard advice. I don’t think you should follow your passion. I don’t think you should only do those things you are passionate about. I think your passion should follow you. I think it is your mission in life to learn to be passionate about the things that you must do.
You weren’t sent here to ignore your duty in favor of doing those things you like. You were sent here to learn to like the things you have a duty to do.
That’s what I think, anyway.
Posted on Friday, 8th May 2009 by chrisjones
Posted in Blog & News, General | Comments (0)