I’ve been reflecting a lot on Cal Newport’s speech about ‘passion’. About how passion isn’t something innate, how it’s not something you are ‘born with’. I think (warning, baby-boomer-esque rant) that’s a large issue with the millennial generation- myself included.
This idea that we have to ‘find our passion’ has been thrust upon us since birth. Look at Disney. We have Belle, who has a passion for reading and thus shall be a writer. Jane, who has a passion for exploring and knowledge and thus is an academic. Mulan, who had a passion for defending her nation and thus became a hero. Even in everyday life, we grew up with Steve Irwin who always loved animals, Cara Delevingne who always wanted to be an actress.
We grew up with people who already knew their passions, and pursued them. People and characters who, while yes working hard to achieve their goals, already had those goals in mind.
Newport talks about how passion comes from hard work, not this false notion that it is the other way around. That if we start of with tremendous will and emotion that we will overcome any doubts and obstacles that dare step in our paths. For many, for myself, I find that these obstacles dilute my passion for something, that once things start to get harder I doubt myself and I question whether this really was what I was ‘meant to do’, whether this was my ‘calling’.
Newport opens the eyes of Millennials and allows us to clearly see that what we are ‘made to do’ is what we become good at. That as we succeed, we grow, as does our passion.