# 99: Work with Passion
Story behind the Passage
What is it that you could be doing for 12 hours a day and never get tired of it? I know what this is in my life but the trouble starts when you find out that this in and of itself cannot be done without also doing other things. It is not only the aspect of being able to live on whatever you love doing. It is also that your brain and heart need some diversion. This is also a matter of daily routine. You cannot sit somewhere and isolate yourself just because you are doing your thing. Well, of course, you can but I am 100% sure that this will make you sick at a certain point and you realize it too late.
Well, at least, I always realize these things too late.
The thing I am talking about, this passion in my life, is writing, of course. A friend of mine summarized it quite well today when she said to me:
“You have many strengths but writing is more than a strength, it is a passion.”
I was quite struck by this simple finding. For sure, the finding itself was not new. But the way she put it was quite unique and striking. You know, “passion” in German translates into “Leidenschaft.” The weird thing about this word in German is that it consists of two parts meaning “suffering” and “creating.” I just checked a German Etymology Dictionary and it defines passion as “overly fierce, impetuous feeling that cannot be controlled by reason” (DWDS). This sounds so right, I cannot even explain it reasonably.
So, this entire conversation and the thoughts about passion made me open Lelord’s book today. I think, I read most of the Hector books and I loved all of them. This passage is one from a chapter called “Hector Is Talking to His Neighbor.” Neighbor here means his seat neighbor on a plane. I think it is quite funny that Hector starts thinking about the flight attendant and her job routine. I often thought of this myself and I always came to the conclusion that it is not a “boring” job at all, no matter how often you repeat the words “tomato juice” or “chicken or beef.”
My Learnings
“… Hector dachte einmal mehr, dass er großes Glück hatte, eine Arbeit zu verrichten, die jeden Tag ein bisschen anders aussah.” / “Hector was once more thinking that he was very lucky to have a job that looked slightly different every day.“ I do not think that this aspect of having a job that offers change can actually be estimated objectively. This is exactly where passion comes in for me. If you are doing what you love in this passionate way, your brain is simply incapable of feeling bored or to even just think about what you are doing from an outside perspective. You are automatically in the Flow zone (yes, I do think I still have to blog about Mihály Csíkszentmihályi one time) and you are fully immersed in the activity.
This activity can look like the same thing to an outsider but to the person pursuing it, it does not necessarily feel different every time. What I am saying is that even this comparison, “this time it was like this… today it feels like that…” is out of the question. It does not occur. You are in a state of complete ‘awareness’ as the Buddhists might say now and there is simply the present moment of writing, painting, building something or whatever. It does not have to be anything in the “creative” category, of course. It can also be a very technical or even a routine task. It does not matter. If you are passionate about it, you will always feel the happiness that Lelord talks about here.
Feeling is another crucial element of this passion that I am writing about quite often in different words. If we are saying that, as the definition above reveals, passion kicks in when rational thinking gets kicked out, it is completely reasonable to understand that feeling is the only radar to tell you what this passionate activity/job is — if you are still looking for it.
“Das intensive Leben lässt die Zeit kurz erscheinen und die Jahre lang… / The intensive life makes time seem short and the years long — yes, but this also has a downside: The more your work is monotonous, the more you run the risk of getting bored while the years also rush by.“ This is something that is remarkably beautiful. Whenever I experienced life in all its intensity, time definitely flew by. And that, in turn, made the years seem very long because there was so much in them. But all this, of course, can only be said retrospectively. While you are experiencing life in all its intensity, you do not think about the entire story, e.g., the entire year and what it would look like retrospectively.
The downside which Lelord mentions in this context is certainly true. Doing boring work also makes the years pass by quickly. But there is a major difference: If you live life in all its intensity, i.e., richness, from my perspective, you never have the feeling that you lost time. Living an intensive life means inhaling every moment, every tiny bit of a second. You know that you could not have made more out of the moment. That is not true for the opposite, i.e., spending your time with things that bore you (to death). Do I think boredom can kill people? Absolutely, at least mentally.
“Dies bewies einmal mehr, dass die Vergangenheit, wenn sie schon nicht existiert, weil sie eben vergangen ist, doch zumindest Spuren hinterlässt, und so existierte sie in der Gegenwart doch noch ein bisschen.” / “Once more, this proves that the past, even though it does not exist anymore because it is past, does leave traces. Thus, the past also exists in the present — at least a little bit.” Of course, when you look at all the things I already wrote about in other posts about “letting go” of things/people/places, this might sound like an antidote. Still, this is not what I want to say. Of course, you need to let go of some things from the past to really move on with your life. However, Hector would not be Hector if he were not damn right about his observation. The past is always with us.
In regard to “passion” and doing what you love without ever getting bored, this realization that the past will always be part of the present can be quite liberating. What I mean is that the things that you really love doing hardly ever change. If you love writing in the present, it is rarely the case that you totally hated it in the past. But what could be different is the awareness of your passion. Yes, maybe you liked writing in the past but you were not fully aware of it because you were doing so many other things as well. Only when looking back are you able to see more clearly what exactly turned some period in the past into a great time. And this, in turn, will open your eyes.
As we all know, we tend to romanticize the past. Finding out about our passion in the present allows us to take a closer look at what exactly made the past bright — or not so bright. I do think that our passion as something that we deeply enjoy doing is a wonderful key to analyzing our “bias” of the past. We might find out that it was only our passion that made certain periods look very bright. And we uncover the various side effects that we might erroneously have interpreted as “great” but were really shitty aspects, only alleviated by the fact that we could retreat into our passion.
In my case, this is certainly true. For sure, this is little wonder. Writing is about perspective and all you get in a text is the perspective of one soul — not more, not less. The question for everybody on the planet is whether or not he/she wants to turn passion into a job. This is not up to me to decide for anybody else. I already made my decision and there is hardly anything more fulfilling than living your passion for the largest part of your day.
But I am not judging anyone who argues that passion and “day job” better be two separate things. I can only appeal to everybody: If you want to share the happiness which Hector discovers on his journeys, at least give it a try. Try to explore what it is that truly makes you forget time. This insight might not change anything in your life unless you decide so. And that is o.k. All writing can do is to simply make you aware of this opportunity.
Reflection Questions
1) Are you a “passionate” person? How would I notice?
2) Does boring work also have its good sides?
3) Do you agree with Hector that the past is always part of the present?