Passion, and Responsibility

In the time-honored field of career counseling, they always tell you to ‘work from your passion’, because if you do what you love, any job becomes enjoyable, you’re willing to put in a lot more work, and hence that brings about a bigger chance of success, not to mention all the good stuff like personal fulfillment and growth.

Well, after quite a bit of soul-searching and equivalent avoidance, I realised that I don’t know what my passion is. Everything so far in my life has come very easily – the sequential progression through educational institutions, the various achievements. I never had to think about what to do, and naturally focused on the short-term objective of ‘doing what I’m doing now well’ instead of asking ‘why am I doing this, what do I want to do, and how do I do it?’ That’s not to say I didn’t love what I was doing, but that it wasn’t a conscious choice, it just happened.

So, in this day and age, where people are solidly divided into two camps, the practical ones and the idealists, what’s preventing me from following the former and chasing indicators of success like respectability, status, achievement, and wealth? Answer: I am, at heart, an idealist.

An idealist without a passion exists in a spiritual vacuum, like a chicken without a head (or heart). Not happy, and fundamentally frustrated. Toss in my perfectionism and you get inertia.

(Of course, there is a distinct possibility too, that subconsciously I do know what I would love to do, but am not willing to consciously admit it lest it withers under the glare of cold reality. But that’s the subject of another post)

So, goal time. I will instill in myself the belief that:

I will find what I love. I will keep searching and never settle until I find it.

I have to take the personal responsibility of laying the groundwork, looking for, and actually defining a passion to align my life with. Nobody’s going to present it nicely on a platter. In fact, passion is probably not found, but chosen. After all, where I am is the combined result of all my past choices. Where I will be depends on what I choose now.

With that, somehow I think I can rest easier. The stakes are lower now. I’m not looking for an eternal spiritual marriage with my career anymore (which hung me up over the past few months). I’m just looking for a job, while I dedicate myself to fulfilling all these idiosyncratic idealistic tendencies.

And if it comes to be that if I can’t define it soon, I ought to take heart in this quote by Joseph Campbell:

“I don’t believe people are looking for the meaning of life as much as they are looking for the experience of being alive. “

So, Live!