One of the most misunderstood cliche today is Passion. With a capital P. That’s what everyone wants to do: chase their Passion.
But while passion is an important factor in deciding on a career, it is not enough by itself.
For one thing, we have many passions. We may love many things, and devoting all our time and effort to just one of them means giving considerably lesser time to others.
Then passion may change. What you love right now, you may not love at the same intensity in the future.
And most importantly, passion are feelings, but feelings are not enough alone to make a reason. One may “prefer” doing something over most other things, but there are other factors at play – your qualifications, career trajectory, pay-check, working hours, location and travel, etc.
Speaking of three industries I know of – theatre, cinema, startups – I have seen too many people jump into them with great enthusiasm, and hitting a wall in a few years when success doesn’t come as fast as they expected. (In theatre, the idea of ‘success’ itself is moot.) The original passion wanes, and now they are stuck in a career with no great prospects.
While watching ‘The Dropout’, the webseries documenting the rise and fall of Theranos’ Elizabeth Holmes, I discovered this quote that she so fervidly believed in that she even put it on her office wall: ‘What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?’
And bingo. That for me was the problem. The fact that this Passion people chase is contingent really on fail-proof success.
This question might be a good starting point in first understanding what we really want to do, if we could remove the fear of failure. But, to me, the question we would be better off asking before we leap into some drastic career move is ‘What would you attempt to do even if you knew you could fail?‘
For we might then arrive at something deeper than any passion we have, and that is Purpose.
Passion defines ‘What’ we want to do, and Purpose ‘Why’ we have to do it.
Purpose is far more elusive than Passion. It becomes an imperative in itself where not even the possibility of failing can deter us.
Imagine someone dearest to you diagnosed with something fatal with near-zero chance of recovery. Would you still try to get the best medical help for them? Of course, yes! That is what Purpose feels like.
After I quit my job to become a full-time writer, it took me more than five years to write my first novel and I promptly sent it to some publishers. I waited for weeks for an answer before eventually realising that that was the answer.
I was at a crossroads. My first attempt had failed. I had too little to show for my years of living on a pittance with very little social life. And being an old Big-data hand, an industry that was exploding, this was also the time two plum offers out of nowhere fell on my lap. Offering to lift me out of this dead-end and deposit me back into the life I had left with all its perks of wages and prestige restored.
It was here that my writing became a purpose. I had to ask myself if I really wanted to risk failure again and go on living like this, and that question distilled into a greater question – why did I have to write at all? And I realised how intensely I felt about all the histories and alternate ways of being we were rapidly losing in an increasingly homogenised and transactional society. I had to write to resist. I had to write because I had to write.
Everything fell into place after that. I knew now that any work I took up would be only to support my writing.
Also, once I realise my purpose was to stand up for these values I believed in, it began to seep into my teaching gigs. A course on art history thus became about learning from this history to find our true voice. Storytelling workshops similarly explored the participants’ own original stories. I ran a startup that documented the lives of ordinary people touching their communities. Tried putting up a vernacular channel that spoke of the idioms disappearing from our language.
My purpose thus became the true North towards which all my initiatives began to turn. The idea of failing disappeared as any impact I achieved was progress.
I have met the same mindset in people running non-profits, scholars, artists who study form, and super-conscious parents. For that’s the other thing. Purpose is focused in making an impact in the lives of others, whereas Passion can sometimes become a means towards a narcissistic gratification.
Elizabeth Holmes herself is an example. If inventing a blood-testing technology that eased the suffering of so many people had been her life’s mission, she would have persisted through failures towards that end. Instead, she chose to deceive them to keep up the charade of success. A good man died because of her actions.
My point here is to not knock off Passion. As I said it is a very, very important ingredient in making our career choice. But Purpose is deeper. It connects us to our larger reason for being in this world. Robert Greene calls it something coded into our unique genetic makeup, but I don’t believe all of us have such great visible purposes that have to become careers. And that’s fine. Providing for your family, trying to live mindfully, doing your bit to create an ethical society – all are as respectable a purpose as any other. To me, such people are far bigger inspiration than the charlatans I see parading everywhere from podiums to LinkedIn, selling snake-oil in the name of Following their Passion.
