On Passion
I’ve been thinking a lot about Passion. Not the sexual kind, although that’s not a bad place for thoughts to land, but for now, I’ve been focusing on the kind you’d like to have for a vocation or a career and the way you figure out how to make them one. With two kids in their twenties, the idea of incorporating passion into work holds much interest for me on their behalf. Who doesn’t want their child to be able to say ‘I love what I do.’ Who hasn’t said ‘he can be a teacher or a ballet dancer if that’s what makes him happy’?
But in the real world the realities of shelter and sustenance and lifestyle seem to take precedent over passion. I suspect that one of my children would adore being a coach and the other would be content walking dogs in Manhattan but neither one of them would earn enough to satisfy their tangible needs and neither one would consider it, at least not now, at an age when the possibility of happiness on all fronts seems, if not within imminent reach, possible. And I don’t blame them. But here’s a thought: Every financially successful person I’ve ever heard says that the key to their success was being passionate about what they were doing.
For me, it’s a no-brainer. I get to work at my passion every day. Although I didn’t have this opportunity until about eight years ago, I have it now and that’s all that matters. Even with all the ups and downs of agents, editors, publishing, marketing and sales, I am grateful for every single day that I have the privilege of being a writer. The ‘passion’ experts advise that you can identify your passion with this question, ‘What are you doing when you lose track of time?’ For me, it’s when I’m writing, reading, or cooking. Okay, and maybe also during a Michigan/Wisconsin Football game. Since I doubt my alumni will be calling me any time soon for defensive tips it’s a good thing that singing the UM fight song or doing the Badger ‘jump around’, remain my hobbies. But writing? Hours go by, literally. And cooking? Let’s put it this way. Every morning I write, and when I’m finished I pick out a recipe for dinner and go to the market for the ingredients and come home and cook. This is my routine most days, broken up only by book clubs, research, and of course, another incredible bonus of being a working writer, the ability to stop everything in order to read a good book. So I get to play with my passions every single day and don’t think I don’t know how lucky I am. It’s for this reason, because I know how great it is, that I want it for my kids.
In truth, I didn’t get here purposefully; it was by accident or at least by some other design. Yet it’s too tempting not to try and reconstruct what I’ve learned in order to form an opinion or perhaps even a blueprint on how to do it. In retrospect, that clearest of all visions, I see that I was always supposed to be a writer. There were definitely signs, huge neon ones, if only I’d been paying attention. Every step of the way I’d been writing, whether it was rhymes at age 7, poor poetry at 16, witty letters in college, and eventually, essays as a concerned citizen. When I volunteered at school it was not as class mother, but as literary circle chair. Even as a social worker, it should have been obvious. The average social assessment is a page and a half-mine were 5-6 pages long.
So if there were signs and I ignored them, what is the average person to do who doesn’t happen to see any? I have a theory. Passions or talents are like certain viruses, and lie dormant within each of us. Just as you can have a predisposition to an illness I believe we are all predisposed to at least one, and perhaps many, gifts, or ‘things we are meant to do’. With a predisposition to an illness, thankfully, unless certain physical or environmental events occur, a person does not get sick. It’s the same with a talent. You’ve got to create activity, try to catalyst some reactions, do what you can to make the passion live and grow. Don’t do what I did and ignore the signs, make a point of looking for them. To the task of figuring out ‘when you lose track of time’ I would add, figure out when you’re ‘in the zone’, when ‘it all feels right, as if you’re doing what you were meant to do’. I’m pretty sure that you can’t make changes until you identify what it is you want.
Finally, even when you figure out what your passion is, it may not be practical to make it your life’s work at this time. You may not be able to leave your CPA job to pursue flower arranging. But, the key is to start to add bits and pieces, even a little bit at a time. Maybe you could take a course on Saturdays for now; you never know when one step is going to lead to a rewarding and surprising other. For me, had I not felt the need to write such sensitive and complicated social histories I probably would not have learned as much as I did about character development and even plot. Go figure. Now, when I question why I waited so long to start my writing career, why I side-tracked to social work, I realize that social work was not a detour at all; not only does it inform all of my novels, but it was actually necessary practice for the thing I was always meant to do.
I’m not sure if I’m any closer to a definitive road map for marrying one’s passion to one’s work and I’m not sure I’m any closer to helping my children do it, but I do know this, tonight I’m going to call them both, I’m going to suggest that one adopt an inner city soccer team in need of a weekend coach and that the other volunteer at the ASPCA. Because like I said, you never know.