Consider the question “Have you found your passion?” This question scares the crap out of many people. It makes people question their entire lives. Ask this question to a 60 yr old grandpa and you can make him regret his whole life, sometimes. I think people usually don’t realize the implication of such an intimidating question. My first article – Passion in Manufacturing expresses my initial thoughts about passion. Here I am presenting my more evolved views on passion again.
The proverbial problem of passion has been approached from so many angles. I have my own views on this subject which were developed through introspection, reading books, engaging conversations with my friends and of course by going through a lot of personal shit. Allow me to use the “Socratic questioning” method to explain my perspective.
Disclaimer*
In my discussion, I am not including concepts such as fate, religion, God, karma, previous life and after life, simply because I can’t handle them in this context. If you believe in any of these, you might already have some ideas on what your passion must be. Things become simpler.
The Socratic questioning is a way of inquiry with clear questions directed at revealing more insights using what we already know for sure.
Coming back to the question - “Have you found something?” (Assuming “found” is used as a synonym of “discover” here) implies that something already exists independent of your decisions and actions in life. Ask yourself when a baby is born does it come with a pre-determined set of passion, interests, habits etc.? Once you become a parent and have a kid of your own, how would you react if someone told you “your daughter has blue eyes, a pretty face, looks just like your spouse and has a passion for bio-technology”? Most rational people would laugh it off thinking “That guy is crazy. How the hell will a new born have a passion?”
I guess many will agree that a new born does not have a passion. So, now imagine your kid growing up. At what point do you think something called “passion” begins to exist? Not so easy to answer right? Yet many adults rush to the conclusion “I haven’t found my passion yet.” I believe we actually create our choice of passion. Just try asking someone who is very sure of their passion in life about how they found out that was their passion. Many of them will tell you they didn’t know it was their passion initially.
After talking to a lot of people with strong passions in life and my own fumbling around, I noticed some patterns and common experiences when people “find” their passion. I propose a simpler definition for passion:
A good counter is that whenever you ask people why they are so passionate about something, they do have clear reasons. You are convinced that the reasons logically point toward their choice of passion as the only inevitable choice. I have my own doubts about such things.
For eg. Let’s say I am passionate about enabling financially poor but high potential kids to receive good education and have access to many opportunities. If someone asks me for my reasons, I might explain “I missed out on a few opportunities as a kid. I feel that educating high potential kids is a good way to prevent so many social problems. Or maybe I am just delusional enough to believe in meritocracy.” These are valid reasons. But my question is do all these reasons automatically point to an NGO for helping these kids? What about taking up a pivotal role in Govt.’s education sector and introduce policies which will help such kids? Or what if I start an NGO for employability training of parents of such kids so that they don’t stop their kids’ education for want of money?
The point I am trying to convey with the above example is that a set of reasons cannot logically lead to a specific choice of passion in a purely deductive manner. In fact it cannot even lead you to buy your car let alone find your passion. Ask anyone “Why or how did you decide on this car?” You get replies about mileage, cost, comfort, etc. But for these answers to be valid the buyer should have considered all the cars in all the brands w.r.t to the factors he quoted and only then decided on the final choice. This is impossible due to the sheer volume of work involved. Most people would have compared maybe half a dozen or a dozen cars at max to finalize their choice. This magical list of dozen cars is conjured up by asking friends, reading articles etc. which is not based entirely on the same choice of parameters. So their argument of logically deciding on the car choice based on a few parameters becomes invalid. I think I read this car example and the following quote in Dan Airely's Predictably Irrational book.
“A 100% rational man belongs in a mental institute”
In fact this is how we make many of our decisions in our real life. I am proposing to do the same to pursue your passion. Now, I am not claiming I know “5 steps to find your passion” but I do feel that there are vaguely similar experiences leading to the creation of a strong passion.
1 1. Curiosity / interest in something triggered by external / internal reasons.
2. 2. Pursuing the interest and exploring more.
3. 3. Realizing you are skilled at what you are pursuing.
4. 4. Start seeing results in your pursuit.
5. 5. Make it a part of your identity.
Somewhere along these 5 steps you forget why you are pursuing this and stop questioning yourself about it. A strong passion is a result of the active pursuit of an interest. A significant portion of the meaning comes from the person based on her / his past experiences and a myriad of other factors, usually unaware of by the conscious mind of the person. This line of thinking is interwoven with what I presented in my Virtual Reality article.
Initially, it is only an interest and you are just exploring it. If you like what you find, you tend to keep exploring. At some point, you will get feedback about how skilled you are in your field of choice. But I do have some doubts on this. It is quite possible that when you like something so strongly and pursue it you might become skilled at it which will fuel your desire to explore further. A classic chicken or the egg first scenario. Then comes the results. It is very difficult to keep pursuing something without any results. Although the definition of results can be whatever you choose it to be, it needs to be defined to give an illusion of progress initially. Surprisingly, you start noticing new reasons for why you like your pursuit. These reasons have come way after your initial interest but suddenly become stronger than some of your initial reasons. These new reasons are what you quote to people when they ask why this is your passion. Poor souls get confused that these reasons were why you began the whole thing.
Finally you reach a phase where if anyone asks you “How did you find your passion? Why are you so passionate about this?”
All you can say is “I don’t know. I just feel like doing this. It’s just a part of me. It is just my passion”, unaware of the smile on your face. By this time you don’t care about skills, results or anything. You and your passion period.
Coming to the title “What if you are already pursuing your passion?” I guess I am trying to say anything can turn out to be your passion especially if you don’t choose it logically. JJust give it some time and sincere efforts. Imagine this. Whatever you are doing right now might be your passion in future. Keep exploring.
