Let It Thrive

I sat here for a while trying to figure out an answer to this question. I combed through the most influential, wise, and helpful individuals in my life, trying to come up with some brilliant piece of wisdom they'd shared with me that guys me every day. And I found that there really wasn't one. There was nothing I could think of that my dad or my grandma or my best friend or a Nicolas Cage character had told me so many years ago that I have plastered up on my wall because it's just such a great principle to live by.

So I struggled with this question for a while, until I resolved on two rules that let me come up with an answer: One, that the piece of advice did not have to be from a single source; and Two, that the piece of advice did not have to be some sort of Grand Unifying Principle, but simply a comforting shard of wisdom that I can come back to every now and then when I really need it.

And so this is what I resolved on as the best, most enduring advice I've ever received: Your passion and your job don't ever have to be the same thing.

This seems rather striking at first, I know, and perhaps even a little bit cynical. It sounds as though by repeating this mantra you resign yourself to the dreary reality of working at a job you hate so that you can simply get through your life.

But those dreary realities are not characterized just by a lack of interest in one's job. More profoundly, they are characterized by a lack of passionate interest in anything. And this is not the sort of life I am resigning myself to.

The unfortunate reality is that the national or global economy does not really have a job available for everyone's most profound interest. We would like to assert otherwise, but the reality of the world - grim though it may be - is that the economy is not defined by you but by others, and if others can't find a use for your interest, it's not going to make you money. And that's okay.

Earlier in the year we read an essay entitled "Tools" in which the author described the profound connection to his father and other ancestors that he felt through his carpentry tools. It occurs to me now that never in this entire piece does the author imply that his father was a carpenter by profession. That essay isn't available to me now, but as I remember it the father's occupation is never even mentioned. And yet we understand deeply that this father was a happy man, a great example to his son, a truly amazing father. I can't presume entirely what his personal passion might have been, but I can guess what it might have been - either carpentry, or his role as a father. Neither made him money. And yet never did this situation seem to drain on him.

The true freedom of this principle is that you don't have to let your interests and passions be dictated by a marketplace. Oftentimes we find parents and friends discouraging teenagers from pursuing their interests in the arts - music, dance, painting, etc. - because "they don't make money." If a teen expresses a wish to become a teacher we tell them they'd be better off as a prostitute because a hooker makes twice the money. But there is a place in one's life for a passion and a job, as two separate entities. The key to happiness isn't that your job has to be your passion - it's that it doesn't kill it.