“Follow your passion” is a topic that is close to several people’s hearts. As a result of this, there has been enormous effort invested on this topic by counselors and the common public as well. Personally, I have tried to dig this for myself for a long period of time. This goes back to my eighth standard to as recently as few years ago. Over the last few years, there has been a gradual change. Mostly, it has been due to the Sadhana and insights from several teachers I have come in contact with either through books, videos or personal interactions.
“Follow your passion” is definitely not a gimmick. It is easy to see from personal experience that we tend to love certain things, or are excellent at – or a combination of both. Essentially, the recommendation is to pursue that as full time career. “Love what you do and use that for earning a living” is the core idea. Now, the two aspects discussed here:
Things we are excellent at – this is a capability issue. Capabilities on certain aspects can definitely be learned. The level or rate at which we learn depends on difficulty or our love for the item in question.
Things we love to do – this is where things seem to “happen”. We “seem” to love a few things or are inclined to like some things for no particular reason. For me, an example would be programming.
But recently for me, the “things we love to do” seems to be a karmic tendency. As much as it seems to be a positivity on the surface, it seems more like a limitation. Essentially, on the flip side, we are saying “there are things which I do not love to do”. At worst, "love" degenerates to a strong like. At best, it is something we are naturally inclined to do with enthusiasm.
My take is that, we need to be able to bring this enthusiasm consciously to anything we do. Passion is at the core of joyful living - and it certainly must not be confined to a narrow spectrum of life!
