The Myth of Doing What You Love

Three Rules for Possibility

There’s a great myth of modern self-help: just “do what you love”. It’s not even wrong. It’s right, but…

It’s just a baby step.

Do What Moves You

What you love is always changing. I used to love music. Now I love art. I used to love sci-fi. Now? I love ancient philosophy. And so on. How about you?

What you love is always changing. That’s just the way it should be. If it’s not, are you growing, developing, unfolding? Probably not enough.

Loving something different at each phase of our lives is one way we know we are moving into more complete ways of being here. It’s immature (sorry, I said it) to still only love comic books at 40 to the way you do at 14. “The way you do”: at the very least, what you see in them should have richened and ripened. Stagnation in the way we love says our emotional spectrum and intellectual repertoire, our human experience, isn’t really expanding, deepening, broadening.

So don’t just do what you love. Do what moves you. What really breaks your heart, makes your spirit rumble like an earthquake, blinds you like a might thunderbolt.

There’s a big difference between what moves you and what you love. What moves you is probably the theme, idea, message unifying all the disparate things you love. I love Joy Division, Picasso, Truffaut. What really moves me is what all these have in common, the thread that binds them: an interest in suffering, redemption, grace.

That’s what really moves me. What I love is secondary to that. It always will be. Next year maybe I’ll discover a new artist, writer, band, book I love. But what moves me in them will be the same. That’s what I need to pursue to really have a full life, one rich in meaning, purpose, happiness – versus just trying to be another Joy Division, Picasso, Truffaut.

To do what moves you, you need to find out first. Just think about all the things you love. What really ties then together? What connects them?

We each need to find our way home in this little life. Not just walk someone else’s trail.

Do What Loves You

What moves you isn’t always what loves you back. That’s the hard truth.

Some careers for some people are unrewarding. Not just in the financial sense, but in the human one. You don’t build relationships, accomplish much, learn, challenge, create, grow. You’re just there, resisting, suffering, getting weaker and more frustrated.

Do something that loves you back. If you’re a woman, don’t spend your life at a firm full of old crusty dudes who’ll never value you, trying harder exactly because. If you’re a minority, don’t waste your life trying to crack a glass ceiling at a place where it’s really made out of diamond exactly because.

That life can’t love you back. You can spend decades trying to make it, and it’s unlikely you’ll experience anything but bitter frustration and pain. Make it a hobby, make it a labor of love, make it a plan C. But don’t make it your One True Path. Walk away from toxic places and people that can’t love you back.

Choose a better mountain to climb. One that you can scale. Not just so you can reach the peak. So that you can grow by reaching, stretching, exploring, and even falling – but not getting crushed along the way.

All that’s what it means to be loved back. Don’t ask your mind. Just ask your heart, your inner intution. Does this place, people, organisation, love me back? Will this ever love me back? Can it?

Then just be still and listen. If that ocean dries up, the answer’s no. If that ocean flows, the answer’s yes.

Do What Loves

This is the most important one, by miles. Light years. Eons.

The question isn’t doing what you love. It’s doing what has a little bit of love in it. What really cares for, nurtures, benefits people. What enhances, transforms, and changes their lives.

Too much stuff in the world doesn’t have love in it. Maybe any love in it. It might claim to be made with care, but that’s just a marketing slogan that tells you it’s not. Too much stuff is made carelessly, thoughtlessly, and offers no real human benefit. If it has no meaning, happiness, purpose in it, how are you going to get any out of it?

The single most important life decision you’ll make is to do what loves. If there’s love in what you do, the fact that you e really done something life affirming, life giving, life changing will always make you feel free, true, noble, beautiful.

Because you are.

Now you can be fulfilled.

But if what you do doesn’t have much love in it, if it’s just wrecking lives, taking advantage of people, how will you feel? Maybe you’ll even learn to ward off the guilt and bury the shame and suppress the futility and disappointment. But that’s all you’ll be doing, where your energy will be going.

Hsppiness, meaning, fulfillment doesn’t happen without doing what loves. It always comes from doing what loves.

That’s why the first two principles matter. Doing what loves needs the dedication, commitment, care that comes only from doing what moves you, not just the thing that you “love” this year. And it needs to be fed and nurtured by doing what loves you back, so you can be supported and held when you fail, not crushed and blamed. No one loves that way.

Start with the last one. Work your way back. Does what you do have any love in it? If it doesn’t, maybe it’s because there’s no love in it for anyone – including you. That’s why it doesn’t love you back.

So go back to the beginning. Forget about what you love right now. What have you always loved? What moves you about all these things?

Just go that way. Your way has always been whispering to you. Now you know how to listen.

Umair

Philadelphia

August 2016