And you'll never work a day in your life. Nonsense.
Do what you love and you will work every day of your life and if there is an afterlife, you will want to be working there too. The difference is, you will enjoy all of the work. You will embrace the challenges as each is a deepening of what you do, therefore, what you love.
We hear such statements and we dismiss them as platitudes or nod in an 'I know, I know' gesture to indicate that we have heard it all before and we already know. Hearing, knowing and understanding are all quite different things.
Most of the time, when we hear what we have heard before we act as if our recognition of the words means that we know it well enough that we understand. This is definitely not the general case.
The statement, do what you love has gone largely over the tops of people's heads for most tend to think that once you do what you love, life becomes easy.
It becomes simple, not easy.
It is simple because you know exactly what you are to attempt each day, each moment and that is whatever cultivates and develops that which you love.
It is insanely difficult for to do this you will do it for it itself, not for some pay-off (although reward may come, it is a symptom, not the goal), you will do it regardless if you are good at it or not, fail consistently, or succeed rarely, whether people agree or support you or are against you, and whether people even know do it.
How many things do we have in our life that we can honestly say we do not care if we get nothing, if everyone dislikes us and is maybe even hostile toward our actions? How many things are we willing to do completely, to the best of our ability even if we get zero in return or the cost to continue is incredibly high?
Have you noticed that the things people generally put their majority of effort into are the things that aim to realise a return on the investment, something that people will support, admire or feel grateful for?
There is nothing wrong with this, but doing it to get something out is the type of work people try to avoid. The type of work that looks to get the most gain for the least effort.
Doing work to put something in is the type of work that requires maximum effort for whatever improvement maximum effort achieves. It is the type of work that delivers meaning, regardless of any result.
Achievement is possible in both, success and failure is available to both too.
The difference is perhaps that after success in the first, the gains are then used to buy completeness. The completion of the task is not the realisation of completeness in the individual
Achievement in the second realises completeness, even if the success is a failure. Just the act of doing what one loves in the moment is a movement in completeness as it is not bound or directed by anyone or anything else except the individual looking to put all of themselves into it.
I don't think there is anything simpler and more difficult at the same time for to truly do what one loves, one must truly know what that is and to do that, one must truly know themselves completely.
That is for another day.
Taraz
[ a Steemit original ]
I was putting out original content about philosophy, consciousness, thinking, etc. for free. Then I found Steemit :)
Like me, you were willing. Could you go back?
Go back to my more important original work? I interject some now and then, but I tend to see the posts I do on newsy-psyche or newsy-tech or whatever topics get more attention. I diversified (don't go all in on one thing only) because that that was more receptive. If I had not diversified from my original content postings, I would not have gotten as much attention for my original work either. It was a trade off to get more ppl to pay attention to more important work by also posting lighter fluff. Always talking about the same thing is easy, but getting out of my comfort zone I guess and doing other posts helped to get more ppl to pay attention to the more important stuff.
Go back to having less people pay attention to my original work, where I make $0 for the year? Nah... Steemit is better so far. Maybe for others, their own blogs and FB gave them attention to their work, but not me really. I'm not much a social butterfly or networker. ;)
Yes, I'll make some short stories on Steemit soon)
When I read the first part of your post I was already to comment that I disagreed. Until i saw the word nonsense, after reading the whole thing I wholeheartedly agree!
I am glad you didn't sell me down the river too soon :)
Hi @Taraz, thanks for this article and your other articles as well. This is the second time this week that the following quote from Castaneda's Don Juan comes to mind:
Recently, I wrote an article: https://steemit.com/philosophy/@contemplate/integrative-philosophy-introduction Would you say that Principle 3b resonates with a number of your recent articles?
Nice piece. food for thought.
I agree with your post and it's full of good advice. But I also think it's important for us to realize that we can and probably would love to do more than one thing and that gives us room to be practical too.
For instance, I have tried many occupations in my life and I have enjoyed some more than others, but hasn't been one singe thing that I love, but many. So I have currently concentrated on the one that seems to be the most profitable, because it's just practical. I'm making a living while doing something that I love. Yes, there are other things I love that would not pay so well and those are left as a hobby (like music) or even as something I don't get to do anymore (like teaching) just because there are just 24 hours in every day and what I've concentrated on now is not less rewarding but offers me a higher income.
People need to get rid of the misconception that there is only one thing that would make them happy as far as making a living goes. There are some things that are pipe dreams and not all of us were made for being a rock star and that's OK. Nothing wrong with realizing that there are some things that are out of our reach - it's just reality. So we need to find something we love doing to make it our occupation, but it doesn't have to be the first thing we realize we enjoy and there is nothing wrong with having some pragmatism as well.