#7: Fake Passion
It's OK to not have a Passion
The word ‘Passion’ is so overused in daily life that we forget what it really means.
Passion is not just the mere interest in something.
But that’s what it has come to mean because no post on LinkedIn is complete without the author telling the world how very passionate she is about something because nothing sounds serious enough without the word.
LinkedIn romanticizes the idea of “Finding your Passion” as if you can just wake up one day and have this burning desire to fulfill your calling.
And your calling better be something noble like solving world peace or at the very least be a skill that’s valuable in the real world, like coding.
If you’re passionate about trading Pokemon cards, well, then LinkedIn in not very interested.
Every ‘motivating’ or ‘inspirational’ Steve Jobs quote reinstates the beliefs that a) everyone needs have a passion and b) there is something wrong with us if we don’t and c) your passion should be marketable.
I used to be very insecure in my lack of passion.
All my LinkedIn connection requests featured the ubiquitous line
“……It’s my dream to work for X because I have a passion for Y…..”
where you can replace X with any company and replace Y with any job or skill.
A company that I would come across only recently would become my dream company and the skills required to join that would instantly become my passion. Talk about being fake.
Accepting that I don’t have a passion felt scary. It felt like life wouldn’t have any meaning without a passion and more importantly, everyone around me seemed to have found one.
So to fit in with the crowd of fellow professionals faking passion, I faked it too.
But someone taught me that genuine passion is actually rare and impossible to fake.
I had a roommate in California, Quan, who was crazy about electronic circuits.
Like literally crazy.
While we watched Netflix or just chilled after work, Quan ‘relaxed’ by watching deeply technical Youtube videos and reading academic papers.
Super quiet and shy otherwise, he could talk for hours about his solar car project team or geek about where he thought the circuits field was heading.
One day, our other engineer roomate, came home with a technical challenge he faced at work.
He had to design some circuits, but as a mechanical engineer, he was totally clueless and very stressed.
I vividly remember that night because Quan was up till early morning, brainstorming a solution and teaching our roommate all the circuits he needed to know.
And he did it without being asked to. The joy of solving that problem outweighed any potential downsides one could think of.
Quan showed me what true ‘passion’ actually looks like.
And since then I’ve been very careful in my use of the word.
Whenever I am about to say, “I am passionate about …..”, I stop and ponder if I am as crazy about that activity as Quan was about circuits.
And usually the answer is No. So then I just say, “I am interested in…”.
But where does that leave all of us who don’t have a real passion?
To answer that question, I like to think about the following —>
People who find their passion at an early age are actually very lucky.
Social media (read LinkedIn) has normalized passion to an extent that it feels wrong to not have a passion.
But realistically, how many things has a 20 year old even tried in her life to know what she enjoys or not? Not a lot.
Hence kids like Quan or 20 year old Steve Jobs are actually very lucky to have stumbled across something, so early on in their life, that gives them so much joy.
They are the exceptions. Not us.
Your passion doesn’t have to make you a billionaire.
In rare cases it does and those are the stories we hear the most.
But don’t let those stories stress you out.
Don’t expect your passion to line up with what the world is ready to throw money at.
In most cases, the world won’t care and that’s OK because your passion is supposed to make you happy. It’s what you enjoy doing, what you find flow in - so who cares what other think.
It’s fine to only be interested in coding, but passionate about painting.
It’s fine to only be interested in banking, but passionate about trading Pokemon cards.
It’s fine to only be interested in entrepreneurship, but passionate about poetry.
Let your excitement and curiosity guide you.
As long as you don’t expect it to make you money straight away or have some other societal expectations on it, your passion may just be right in front of you.
Observe your day.
What topics or ideas guide your web browsing and your conversations?
What dominates your thoughts without you consciously thinking about it?
What would you rather be doing than your boring homework or other daily life tasks?
The answer to ‘what is my passion’ maybe simpler than you think :) .
Hey Raghav!
This is particularly insightful. I feel that often the search for a "one, true passion" leads to a sense of insecurity and inferiority, and that often stresses people out. The way this mechanism plays out in different contexts is eerily similar and easy to trace. This reminded me of a TED talk I heard a few days ago and I'm sharing the link here. Do let me know what you think :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6MBaFL7sCb8
I really needed to hear this. Thanks