Pleasure in the job puts perfection in the work.
— Aristotle
Many of us are keen, perhaps desperate, to pull more joy and passion into our lives. Mental health is itself a pandemic as we continue to over-expose ourselves to conflict. Not in the warfare sense, but exposure to conflict of opinions or interests, distasteful virtue signalling, and everything everywhere all at once will send your defence mechanisms and flight responses on overdrive. With this, your body is never at rest.
Amidst it all, we hear two conflicting pieces of advice: do what you love, follow your passion, versus don’t make your hobby/passion your day job. The latest mantra of recent years has been about “not working a single day in your life” and quitting your nine-to-five for a lifestyle like those we see time and time again on social media. It’s easy to feel starstruck by the seemingly countless success stories we wish to emulate. But this cultural fascination is terribly misplaced.
It’s natural to look in the face of our lifestyle and decide you finally want to pluck from your dreams and bring them into reality. Who knows. Maybe something unexpected will grow from the risk. Following our biggest inspirations is as easy as it looks, right?
But there’s a reason why things often look too good to be true and end up as fantasy tropes. Part of the beauty in life comes from the fact that despite its anxieties and quirks and issues, there is a chance for you to fall into this rare state of calm, joyful exuberance with a tinge of taking the right things seriously.
In fact, as Heather Havrilesky says, taking your life seriously is a form of joy. And we feel more joy when we believe in why we’re on this earth and what we can do during our time.
Due to modern culture's distaste for self-seriousness, I know self-alignment, self-efficacy and taking the initiative are hard. Waking up and doing what you love each day is on everyone’s mind. But you must be able to approach your ideas with a level of seriousness and rationality. Anxiety, depression, and avoidant, neurotic or obsessive thinking tend to flow a little too naturally through society. People unconsciously give it too much time, leading us to believe we already take life way too seriously. Therefore when we reach the point of wanting to morph our passions into a career, sullen and problem-fixated thoughts quickly overrun us, and hobbies feel too much like obligatory work.
I believe in striving for a vocation you can enjoy and sink your heart into. But the chaotic and glorious reality of nature means that our inner and outer worlds will remind us about the impermanencies of life as a precursor to feeling full of disappointment and loss. You can quickly feel stuck and resentful of something you were once passionate about once that joyful feeling is lost.
What we love doing and what people are willing to pay us for can be very different. And how would you react to someone telling you how to do your passion? When I started taking cycling more seriously, it meant I needed a coach to analyse every detail of every training ride and force me into a regiment which eventually sapped the joy from what used to feel like therapy and gave me hope. There became deadlines, constraints, tests, criticisms, and rules that made me feel I was taking things too seriously.
These weren’t the things that grounded me in my skin and helped me feel closer to a purpose on this planet. It mostly led to agitation, which added more problems I started actively ignoring.
Having one or many callings is fundamentally what makes us feel hopeful and insightful and feel like we have a clear vision of the role we want to play in the world. Passion is rarely aimed at attaining a quantifiable result that can be translated into rewards we gift to the world. It’s built for self-involvement, self-care, and a hint of selfishness. When it is a job, you want to get away from it. You dread the view of how much time and money it requires. You’ll find yourself having excuses for everything, blaming bad results on external factors. Your emotions will cloud your judgement. Every situation is different, but all roads can risk leaving you feeling empty.
So, what should we do?
It’s relatively simple: people generally want to make enough money to live comfortably in a job they enjoy. That’s the goal we should take seriously. Ask what individual skills you gained from a passion that you enjoy. For me, cycling, working online, and my interest in cars got me interested in data, discipline, and a knack for being hands-on and working in marketing. Once you nail down a list of skills you can leverage along with tasks and environments that make you shine, build your life around them while they wake you up and energise you each day. Learn to express them. Make an effort to connect with people in the same field—people who love their work and processes, and lives as much or more than you do—because the more you open up to people who dare to care and take things seriously, the easier you can leave that world of neuroticism and obsession where most people live. And the sooner you can enter a new world that is calmer, more compassionate and lets your talents thrive.
Don’t turn your passion into your job, but let the seeds of skills that fall from each passion be sown into land and grow into something greater. Something that makes you feel the beauty of your impact.