“Do what you love” is elitist
The other day I was thinking about my relationship with music. I started to be an avid listener at age 11, to play an instrument at 18, to write my songs at 19. I absolutely loved everything.
The other day I was thinking about my relationship with music. I started to be an avid listener at age 11, to play an instrument at 18, to write my songs at 19. I absolutely loved everything.
I loved the idea of making my own music. I loved that I could relate with other people’s music and that others could do the same with mine. I wanted to reach out people with music. I wanted to be a rockstar, and playing in a band and going on tour and making records and whatnot.
When I was about 21, I played at a fairly crowded gig with my then-band. it wasn’t the Wembley Stadium of course, but I guess that there were about 300 people all paying attention to us. And there I was, up on stage, being a rockstar, playing my music with my mates with all those people down there cheering at us between songs.
The problem is that I didn’t like it at all.
For MANY years I thought I was a weirdo or some sort of an incoherent shell of wishes, but the truth is that for many years I thought that playing music and playing live were parts of the same world. Turned out that they aren’t, at least not for me. Playing live to me is merely performing. And performing has little to do with playing music.
Not that it’s bad but, I mean, I can perform in many other forms and they don’t have to be necessarily music-related. For example, I love to teach and speak to the class. That’s performing. But music, I feel that my conception of music is just creative and intimate. And performing is not that.
How can this be true at all? How can you wish for something so badly and then realise that you don’t want it at all?
When I was a child I remember that occasionally stranger people came to our house trying to sell us encyclopedias. Today we have the internet which in some ways does the same thing. Obviously it doesn’t sell us encyclopedias — we have Google — but we’re sold on blogs and YouTube channels and Twitter accounts and stuff, even if we don’t pay any money. We pay with our status of followers. There’s nothing wrong with that, I do that too, but it’s still the condition in which someone is trying to sell us something. A product, an idea or even a concept.
The inspirational blogger that came from another country and made his way to success alone. The YouTuber that started fooling around and now makes a living off of videos. The entrepreneur that started his business on eBay with few clients, mostly friends of friends, and now has a yearly net of 2 million dollars.
They do what they love. They were like you, ordinary people, and they made it. So, for the principle of the transitive property, you can make it too.
“You can do whatever you want to. You only have to work hard.” How many times have you heard sentences like this? Countless.
The only problem is that “do what you love” is elitist.
When you get out of college or high school, you have the pressure of doing the right thing right away. A part of the society expects you to do something now. Another part wants you to “follow your passion”. And, people who hate their day jobs tells you to do what you love or you’ll end up a grumpy adult. And, you’re only 19 or 23. No pressure.
“Follow your passion” means that you have to plan your job now and work to make it real later. Sounds like a perfectly organised and professional plan. There’s only one problem: you don’t know what’s going to happen between now and later.
When I decided I wanted to be a rockstar, I didn’t plan to dislike playing music on stage. But what if happens? Usually you think you’re useless, unworthy of your wishes, incapable of working hard and you back down. You give up. “Follow your passion” means to stick with one thing and one thing only — your passion — and to be incapable of flexibility.
“Follow your passion” is not the real world for two reasons.
First off, flexibility is a huge part of the real world. You have to rethink yourself and your life constantly, from getting a different bus to get at work to find a new job cos you suddenly lost it.
Also, the sentence “follow your passion” means that you’re a follower. A follower of your passion. Hence, passion dictates you.
But passion is by definition a powerful emotion of enthusiasm or interest that isn’t controllable. How can you follow something that you can’t control?
You can’t help to sing out loud that song or to paint a canvas after you worked 8 hours. You just can’t. You do it cos you can’t control it.
Beware, this is not a catastrophe! Now it comes the good part.
When I was 25 I didn’t play video games at all. The only experience I had was playing my arse off on my Amiga 500 when I was in the elementary school, but then I stopped when I was in middle school. When I was 25 I had no plan whatsoever to do some kind of work related to video games. I thought it was kind of silly and that it would be boring to be 8 hours in front of a screen and playing.
Turned out that four years later I went all the way to Canada to do that job, and I absolutely LOVED IT! To say it better, I DISCOVERED that I had passion for that job.
Or, I hated my teachers in high school and I never thought I could be a teacher. Guess what I discovered I love to do? Fair enough, I spoilered it to you in the previous lines, but still.
If you’re in high school or you just graduate and don’t know what your passion is, your brain is fine. You’re not a weirdo, you’re not a freak. You’re fine, I promise.
There are things that will happen in your life that will make you understand that you’re passionate about something. And you might be able to discover you’re passionate about something else in case you’ll have to do another job.
Don’t just “follow your passion” like bloggers and YouTubers tell you, I implore you. “Follow your passion” is elitist because if they’re selling you their story, and the encyclopaedia guys at my house never told us the whole truth. There was something wrong, but according to them their products were the best in the world.
