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.
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.
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.
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.