I remember talking exactly a year ago right now to Steve Jobs, who was very ill…He said, “Yeah, we’re always talking about following your passion. But we’re all part of the flow of history...
Saturday, September 22, 2012
Steve Jobs’s Complicated Views on Passion
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I found this article fascinating and incredibly relevant to the SOD and students' lives at CMU in general. I'm almost 100% positive that almost every single person that was accepted into the School of Drama, whether for undergrad or grad, wrote something on their application about how theatre or the performing arts is their passion. It's how we all justify wanting to be here to some extent.
But I do think that there is something incredibly important about what the Jobs and Isaacson quotes: a passion should be translated into a world context: what can we do with our passions that can make the world a better place (as cliche as it is) or that can help someone? And the performing arts absolutely can help someone or influence the world. The best theatre I've seen has engaged the audience and engaged events in the world.
Someone in Purnell passed me in the hallway the other day as I had the news up on my screen and asked what I was doing. When I said that I was reading the news, they asked me "Why? We live in Purnell and never leave." I think that it's important to not lose sight of the fact that our passion has to exist in the context of the world, and if we don't incorporate that into our "passion", there's a huge contradiction in that.
Despite the valid points that this article makes, I still think that the simple slogan, “follow your passion” is a very useful one when applied correctly. Following your passion with regards to school and employment ensures that you will work very hard to achieve your goals and become an expert in your chosen field. When you’re doing something that is very exciting and personally important to you, you are much more likely to push the envelope and create inventive new ways of doing things. In turn this innovation will benefit your entire industry. By pursuing individual excellence in a field one can positively influence the entire field. It is much easier to achieve excellence in an area that one is passionate about.
Following your passions is important outside of a career as well; advice that many of us in SOD would do well to heed. A well-rounded person should pursue several interests, not just the one that they have chosen to center their career around. If you love to cook, for example, then don’t let it fall by the wayside. In School of Drama we so often get caught up in school and our art that we forget to purse other interests that we used to be very passionate about, I know that I have been guilty of this on several counts. Following these smaller passions also gives back in a way by making you a more interesting and well thought out person. This can affect your work and interpersonal relationships in tons of minute positive ways.
I agree with Margaret that "follow your passion" is still a useful phrase. The way I think about this phrase after having read this article is that following your passion is something you do early on life. When you discover what you want to do, go to school for it, and then first enter the real world in your given field, that's following your passion. Once you've secured a career in the field you're passionate about, then you need to do something more with that passion. You need to use your passion and the knowledge you've gained about it to improve the world, even if it's just for a small group of people. It's selfish to keep your knowledge to yourself; if you're truly passionate about something, you'll want to help others to see how great it is.
Careful. Benefiting the community and doing things not just for yourself but for everyone else around you sounds AWFULLY Socialist... What kind of world would we live in if everyone shared all the world? Or lived their life in peace? Had no possessions? No religion, too? Huh. Imagine that.
This article really made me think about the work passion. What does it mean to me, would I say that would I do here at SOD is a passion of mine, yes I would. I am really wondering if the phrase has been used so much that it has lost it merit. Imagine being the first gradating class to hear a speech about passion, and being inspired. 10,000 speeches later would the same speech still inspire or just roll on deaf ears. Think the best thing this article did was to have us stop and consider the word and the implications in our lives. Reminding us what we are doing and why.
To Jake's comment, the Smurfs they were happy and I would say passionate about life. Maybe they were a little more communist then socialist but that is a small line to cross, right?
I feel like Jobs perfectly sums up what we do in the theatre. We all have our respective passions - and we are collaborating together for something bigger than ourselves. The idea of "why this play now" is a perfect example. To put on a show because its cool is one thing, but to channel our skills, talents, passion, and creative energies towards a piece of work that is not only beautiful, but benefits our world in a relevant and enlightening way - is bigger than ourselves. Jobs is right - its not just about our passion.. its about using our passion to make something for the world.
I both agree and disagree with Mr. Jobs. I certainly see his point that in following your passion you should keep in mind the benefit of the greater good, because thats where many of todays greatest inventions come from is people with passions wanting the world to benefit from there work. But at the same time I think this is bad advice for young audiences. Many high school & college age kids, and even some recent graduates are most likely still trying to find out what their passion is or have just found it and are trying to figure out what to do with it. & unless your passion is helping others or a desire to make an impact on the world at large than I think our society as a whole would benefit the most in the long run if people were selfish with their passions at least to start off with.
I know my passion is for costuming and sewing, but at the moment im not setting out to change the world. Right now im following my passion for the sole reason that it is what I love to do and what makes me happy. & I think that if I continue to follow my passion for the rest of my life, someday I might get the opportunity to have an impact on the world and that would be an amazing thing too. If i wanted to try to impact the world by following my passion now, I know I would end up trying to hard and failing and/or would just get too frustrated and leave my passion behind. I thinks it a great very long term goal, but for the younger crowd should be put on the back burner for the next twenty years or so.
I find this very interesting and makes me think. You do want to do something that you love but if no one ever noticed then you are doing nothing good for everyone. I would like to be one of those people that pushes the limits and finds out new things that could have a major change on the way that things work, or possibly come up with a way that would attract more people to the entrainment industry and a different way that the art could be integrated into society. I just hope that more people think of this when they do their work or thinking of a job that they should do.
I think this article fits in perfectly with the JPP working. Many of people in our generation are told to follow our dreams and passions, and many parents are working hard so their children can that because they didn't or couldn't. So children listen and we follow our dreams we listen to our passions and we get to the moments where because it is required it is not as much fun anymore and to me this is the time when I remember Albert Cadmus. Cadmus explained that that life has good and bad moments in life and we all know it so by rejecting that fact it only hurts yourself. He believed that you should love the moments of joy and if there are moments you don't like it is ok the passion of what you do love should worth more than that.
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