Thursday, April 25, 2024
The Trouble with Passion
annehelen.substack.com: If you do what you love, the saying goes, you’ll never work a day in your life.
…I’ll admit that I had a hard time typing that with a straight face. Was it ever that simple?! In reality, tying something you love doing directly to your financial stability is logistically and emotionally fraught, to say the least.
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4 comments:
This article was very interesting to read. I have found myself struggling a lot with this idea of passion and specifically linking it to the workplace. A lot of people will say this idea of if you love what you do you'll never work a day in your life, and while I do think that part of that is true in which you'll feel better about what you're working on and enjoyment out of it, you still are inherently working. and I think this mindset, especially being in the capitalistic society that were in, has allowed for people within especially artistic fields to get taken advantage of. Personally it makes me cautious really the only things I've ever been interested in have been in the arts field. While I am very happy doing what I am doing and I think I'm making a good choice for myself I am always wary that linking my life and my hopeful profession so closely to some of the only things that bring me joy in my life such as theater and English may make it so that my relationship with those things will sour.
This was a really interesting article to read when nearly everyone in this field ascribes to the idea of finding passion in their work. However, I think that something missing is what causes this whole thing to be a problem, the idea that we need to love our work, and the idea that what our love is should be intertwined with our work. The reason is, as always, capitalism. Because we are expected to spend so much time and so many hours working, we need to enjoy what we do in order to find worthiness in our lives, or we’d spend the majority of our lives in misery. However, I think this was an extremely poignant point and there’s definitely something to say for not relying solely on what we love as our livelihoods. Especially with the stress that comes with every job, I believe it’s better to love the actions you do for the job, than just the idea of the job on a good day.
I think the trouble in this article arises out of what we consider passion. Someone merely enjoying something can be misconstrued as passion, and that I think is dangerous, as simply enjoying something is not a particularly good reason for doing it, especially if the thing you're enjoying is helping to perpetuate harm or some role in society that an individual can adopt. People who have never been exposed to ideas that they could love obviously will not follow those ideas into a career, or, could follow those ideas in a self perpetuating fashion, leading to a chain reaction that repeats socioeconomic statuses and ideals. I think that the way to combat the issue of passion is to expose students to as many possible things as possible, and to help with career focused guidance, instead of "follow your passion." Passions can also lead to workers being exploited by their bosses, because hey they enjoy the work right?
I really enjoyed this article, it hit the nail on the head about some of the issues I feel like I’ve been having in our industry. The underlying belief that we should do our work because we are passionate about it has caused so many problems. I think back to some of my first internships where I was told that if I’m truly passionate about the work I’m doing I won’t complain about my 16 hour days (16 hour days for a month straight with no days off). Standing up for myself and setting boundaries was seen as not being passionate about the work, and it’s a recipe for burnout doing the thing that we love. I also agree that being able to do something you are passionate about relates to your socioeconomic status; I know that without the help of my family over the past ten years I would not have been able to pursue Stage Management and theatre. Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing something I’m passionate about what do I have left when I don’t fully like the work that I am doing in the moment.
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