To fixate on finding work that makes us happy is a luxury
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If you think the way of life of your elders made the world a better place, go ahead, think and do like them, maybe it will make you happy, like them.
I may be disrespectful, but for me it looks like my elders left me with a suffocating planet populated by too many people taking too many drugs.
And I don't want to be a part of this, I'm not smart enough to change the future, I probably won't do much good to mankind, so I'm going to enjoy myself and leave the tiniest footprint when I'm leaving. Nobody owes us fun, we owe it to ourselves.
“Me? A lawyer? No. Why?”
“Hoping you might be, is all. I could use a lawyer. Whaddya do, then? Advertising man, or what?”
“No. I work for Knox Business Machines.”
“Whaddya do there? You design the machines, or make them, or sell them, or repair them, or what?”
“Sort of help sell them, I guess. I don’t really have much to do with the machines themselves; I work in the office. Actually it’s sort of a stupid job. I mean there’s nothing — you know, interesting about it, or anything.”
“Interesting?” John Givings seemed offended by the word. “You worry about whether a job is ‘interesting’ or not? I thought only women did that. Women and boys. Didn’t have you figured that way.”
“Oh, look, the sun’s coming out!” Mrs. Givings cried. She jumped up, went to the picture window and peered through it, her back very rigid. “Maybe we’ll see a rainbow. Wouldn’t that be lovely?”
The skin at the back of Frank’s neck was prickling with annoyance. “All I meant,” he explained, “is that I don’t like the job and never have.”
“Whaddya do it for, then. Oh, okay okay –” John Givings ducked his head and weakly raised one hand as if in a hopeless attempt to ward off the bludgeon of public chastisement. “Okay; I know; it’s none of my business. This is what old Helen calls Being Tactless, Dear. That’s my trouble, you see; always has been. Forget I said it. You want to play house, you got to have a job. You want to play very nice house, very sweet house, then you got to have a job you don’t like. Great. This is the way ninety-eight-point-nine per cent of the people work things out, so believe me buddy you’ve got nothing to apologize for. Anybody comes along and says ‘Whaddya do it for?’ you can be pretty sure he’s on a four-hour pass from the State funny-farm; all agreed. Are we all agreed there, Helen?”
- Richard Yates, Revolutionary Road
Not everyone has a passion that also involves a high paycheck, and since yours does you really have no right to criticize those that don't.
This line really sums up the sentiment.
> You do not deserve to pursue your passion.
Who are you to judge what someone deserves? From the contents of the piece, you gave up nothing in the pursuit of your paycheck (and if you did you should probably rethink the structure of the piece). Why should anyone else?
Also, did you ever stop to think that maybe Santiago's father's passion was to provide for his family, and so - in a way - he was following his passion?
This is all coming from a millennial that has a well paying job, and one that is also generally pretty damn proud of his generation.
Go back to reading your Ayn Rand novels.
Back to the core topic. I would argue about balance though. A lot of people are lucky to be in a position where they have that extra room. It's good to use part of that room,
There are parts of the world where that room was present for a long time, and yet due to fallacy of logic and paternal traditions people were forces to a "safe" choice. Now that this room is not existent, you have the majority of people that hate their job and their "safe" choice is not safe anymore. At least with passion it would have been easier and happier even to the whole society.
Suffice to say, that parents of course will try to do everything to take care of their family. No doubt about that.
"Our sires' age was worse than our grandsires'. We, their sons, are more worthless than they; so in our turn we shall give the world a progeny yet more corrupt." Horace, 20BC
But maybe more jaded, I also see a business owner looking to maximize profit and minimize expenses by gas-lighting a bunch of kids into shoveling shit all day for peanuts.
> Are you a burden to those around you?
> No? Good on you! By all means pursue your passion. Feed your Chinese Crested Hairless.
> Yes? Screw your passion. Get a job. Support yourself. Pay your own way so that you can stop draining the people and resources around you.
My passion was being creative, and I used to write poetry, but I found a way to express my creativity and make good money in programming (I truly find programming to be a transcendent creative process—much like writing poetry).
I, like many others, have had times when my oxen were in the ditch, and I had no choice but to work to get them out. Some folks are stuck in that place. But if you can, try to involve a little passion in your work and carve out a space where you can feel at least a little fulfilled at the end of a day.
P.S. I just read the author's bio, and coincidentally, it's not so different from my path, so flip a coin and take either person's advice—or neither person's advice.
People also like me a lot better now that I don't hate a third of my life, am not trying to compensate for that with money, and have a certain zest from getting to genuinely work on things I'm passionate about.
YMMV, as some passions are more expensive than mine to get in to, but my point was that there's a spectrum of reasonable reactions to work-life balance, and the choice needs to be individual.
When his family got here, he was just happy to be alive. His father used his technical knowledge to land a job at a computer company. He was told the same thing by his father. Work to provide for your family, then create your opportunities to do what you love. His father told him it was more important to be employed doing something, then sitting around chasing your dreams not doing anything.
He said it was because he had to work menial jobs, it allowed him to go to school, get a degree, and move up in the world.
Want to end world hunger? Okay, quit whining about the 1%, get to work, and create an organization that can make that happen. If it truly was your passion, there shouldn't be anything stopping you from accomplishing it. It seems, then, that the "passion" is really just an excuse for not trying.
No one ever got pulled aside from ditch-digging to be asked "I'm just not sure if you're really into this"
Failing to find something that your're passionate about and valuable is cheating both yourself and other people out of the value you could be creating, if not for your masochism.
I think we need to learn to do stuff even if we "don't feel it" yet, that state comes later as a reward for doing.
Long ago I read an article that made me think about this: http://www.wisdomination.com/screw-motivation-what-you-need-...
I know more than a few people who avoid seeking jobs they enjoy because they feel "work should be miserable and hard". I don't understand them at all.
Seriously, most jobs are about you doing stupid - and often morally questionable - shit to enrich the owners, while only incidentally providing any value to society at large, and only the minimum amount of value the company can get away with. All of that in exchange for currency which you need to stay alive.
Do you think grocery store clerks have passion for their work? In particular, are they passionate about all the shenanigans like washing old meat with dishwashing fluid to make it smell less? No, they do this to stay alive. Do you think programmers writing all those stupid superaddictive on-line games have passion for sucking money out of people who lack impulse control? Well, maybe they do, but that's exactly the soul damage I'm talking about.
So sure, by not working on something I'm passionate about I am "cheating" the society out of the value I could be creating. Except that the society is not often giving away jobs I can be passionate about without utterly destroying my very self.
What if you put that aside for a while and think about it in terms of going with your strengths instead? Same thing, different angle. If there's any choice about what job you might take, take the one where you can add the most value, relatively. That's a job where you'll be appreciated more and hopefully compensated well for. The thing is, there's a correlation there to passion, but passion is not required.
"Money doesn't by happiness" may be technically true, but it is necessary in our society to fulfill basic needs and it's absurd to think its utility beyond that diminishes significantly.
Or to put it another way: suffering is not itself a virtue, but the willingness to suffer when needed certainly is. And if suffering is unnecessary, failing to do so is hardly wrong!
My grandfather had a third grade education and worked quite hard; outside work he enjoyed his life. He and my grandmother insisted that all the kids get educations and were gratified that their kids could choose and enjoy a different kind of fulfilment.
Baby boomers were spoiled by parents who found themselves in a prosperous society after themselves having grown up in depression and war: they didn't want their kids to have to live such a life. The results were mixed (I'm younger than the boomers) but I still feel that was a great choice.
If you find yourself in a circumstance where that isn't possible then you need to just put your shoulder to whatever grindstone you can.
blog actual title: "Screw Your Passion. Get a Job."
Both the submitted title and the blog's title do not pinpoint the author's main issue: don't make others (such as your parents) unfairly pay for your pursuit of passion.
It's not about "passion". It's about funding.
They are orthogonal. So... either:
1) pursue your passion part time while paying the bills with a "day job" -- which is what many musicians, poets, novelists, artists, etc do.
2) consciously downsize your lifestyle and stick to the budget of a starving artist (cheap apartment, used car, no Starbucks) while selling your artwork on the street or whatever. When the big commission money from the Guggenheim Museum comes in, you can start buying Starbucks.
Many variations of those 2 options can keep passion-seekers from burdening their parents.
1) Making others pay for your pursuit of passion.
2) That having others paying for your pursuit of passion is unfair to them.
Neither of which are safe, or even good, assumptions to make.
Conversely, I am willing to assume that Santiago's father probably gladly paid for some things that allowed his son to pursue his passions, and - as stated in the piece - allowed him to do work that intersects his passions. Immigrating was probably one of those things.
I'm not making that assumption. I'm responding to the article. Author already framed it with the question:
"Are you a burden to those around you?"
That self-diagnostic question is really the main point of the article. The "screw passion" in the title is just provocative bait. The article goes on to admonish those who mentally say "yes" to that question.
Yes, he promotes that self-diagnosis without defining burden, which is also kind of the point of my response to your comment.
Personally, I don't need the author to define "burden" for me to understand his point.
Part of being an adult is to judge the financial relationship with your parents as being fair. This includes overriding your parents saying to you, "Oh don't mind us, we don't need that $5000 for a European vacation or retirement funds. We want you to use it to produce your rap youtube video!"
In other words, parents can be simultaneously "generous to you" and "unfair to themselves".
No doubt you have your own idea of what is a burden which may be different from many other readers but it doesn't really matter right? Every parent-child dynamic is different.
Yes, it absolutely does matter. The difference isn't that I'm defining the meaning of burden differently than you. It's that I'm choosing to not broadly define it at all (because I know that every dynamic is different), and that the author (and you) are choosing to define it.
The author's entire point completely relies on a universal definition of burden because he's also making a universal statement about following one's passions. That universal definition doesn't exist because (as you said) every dynamic is different. So, his entire argument (the title of the piece) falls apart once it's understood that the definition of burden is inherently non-universal.
Also, the word burden is just not a very good (e.g. very descriptive) word in this context.
If you have a personal non-universal idiosyncratic definition of "burden", please share it.
I assume its something compatible with ",gladly paid for some things that allowed his son to pursue his passions,"
(I don't think it would change the plug-and-play nature of the author's essay but I'm willing to be shown that _your_ definition completely throws the author's words into a mess of contradictions.)
> Are you a burden to those around you?
Where burden is being used as an attribute, i.e. to be a burden. This requires knowing what a burden is, which you actually stated yourself as being different from person to person.
> your own idea of what is a burden which may be different from many other readers
My logical reasoning, like I said, doesn't rely on some "personal non-universal idiosyncratic" definition of burden, it relies on the statement you said yourself, that what a burden is is contextual.
But, the author needs a universal definition (which is why I said that burden isn't a very good word), and part of that definition is a universal judgement on the absolute moral correctness of being a burden.
Am I a burden on those around me? Yes? Well maybe that's okay, because being a "burden" doesn't have to be inherently bad.
That Chinese Crested Hairless is a "burden" by some definition, but that's okay.
A newborn certainly could be a "burden", but that's okay.
Someone's parents are paying for him or her to go to college and graduate debt free, that certainly could be a "burden", but it's also okay. He or she probably shouldn't drop out of school and get a job, so he or she can stop being a "burden".
Then all you have to do as a reader is personally define "burden" as "burden-that's-not-inherently-bad-which-is-okay" and therefore you mentally answer "no I'm not a burden" and the plea from the essay no longer applies.
Also, I don't assume the passion-chaser coerced the parent to pay unfairly. (That was your assumption of my answer.) What's unfair is up to the reader to decide.
That pretty much undermines most of the "value" of the article, it skips all those steps in the discussion and tries to sum it up under a single (universal) question. And then goes on a terrible rant about how people don't deserve their passions.
That's my entire point.
How about we just skip all that garbage (e.g. bullshit) about screwing your passions and just say: if you need a job, or if you need to pay bills, or if you want to be self-reliant, getting a job is a good way to fix or do those things?
Also, I never said anything about coercion, but it is implied by your use of the word make in the phrase: "don't make others (such as your parents) unfairly pay for your pursuit of passion." And I just cast a light on the implication.
Yes! That specific context is in _your_ (the reader's) head!
>Because none of those things are discussed in the article.
It doesn't have to. You know more about your situation than the article.
>if you need a job, or if you _need_ to pay bills, or if you want to be _self-reliant_, getting a job is a good way to _fix_ or do those things?
And anyone can do the same to your sentence that you criticize the article for. What does "need" actually mean? What does "self-reliant" actually mean? What does "fix" actually mean? Every word in every article dissected. Ad infinitum.
(No, that doesn't mean I want you to you to add "context and nuance" to all those words. Same for the article about "burden." It would be tedious.)
To me, your special exemptions for burden look compatible with the article. To you they don't. Seems to be a matter of about the lens of language rather than a philosophical contradiction. I don't think the article depends on 7 billion people to universally agree on what "burden" means. Very few writings outside of mathematical proofs can meet that standard of agreement.
A normal article would say: Here's why you should do X. And then it would explain why you should do X. This article does not do this. It makes a universal statement about the immorality of being a burden, and says if you're a burden you don't deserve your passions. And it fills the rest of the space with strange anecdotes about Santiago, and ridiculous judgments from a man who, from what I can tell, followed his passions to his paycheck.
If the only interesting part of an article is in my head, why was the article written? This article provides absolutely no interesting insight at all.
I know meaning has been a hard sell in this conversation, but...
The difference between my conditional statement and a question, is that in my statement I'm only providing a solution to a problem, not defining the problem. The theme of my article would be "what to do if you need a job," not "you need a job." I'm not trying to provide clarity into the "why" just the "what." That's fundamentally different than this article.
I don't have a special exemption for burden. I'm not dissecting the sentence. I just look for substance in the things I read, I didn't find any here.
I'd wager _most_ of us would not continue working these jobs if we had the option not to. If someone plopped <sufficiently large amount of money> into my bank account, I really don't think I'd continue working at my job, regardless of how much I appreciate it today.
It's well worth the effort, and justifiably something to fixate on.
yeah, the rest is spent on HN :)