Following Your Passion
Episode #308
Everyone is encouraged today to “follow your passion”. What they mean by this is that you should pursue whatever fills you up. You should pursue whatever you are passionate about. Obviously, we are all passionate about different things - some love knitting, others football, and others again book reviews! Is this advice, though, to follow one’s passion, actually good advice? And if it is, is it even achievable?
The audio version of this episode is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, and wherever else you listen to your podcasts.
Shitty Jobs
First, let’s dive into why this topic often comes up in the first place. Many people - so many people that it’s a little heartbreaking - are working jobs that they simply do not like. They get up, they get into their cars, they drive to work, the whole time dreading it, they get to the office, they get a coffee and maybe some water, and then the day starts. They are glued to their desk or perhaps the piece of machinery they are operating, and they remain there.
They relish the time to go to the bathroom because “hey, I can look at my phone for 10 minutes!”. Coffee breaks are also something to get excited about, and, heck, that noon lunch break is to die for! And then the day is half over.
I’ve been here. I’ve worked jobs like this that are soul-killing. And many people today are. It still blows my mind how many people define work as “something that you do not want to do”. It’s then weird for someone to say “I love my work!”, and these people are often considered workaholics.
I’ve been accused of such. I work a lot. My day job eats up anywhere from 40 to 70 hours a week, depending on the season. The work I do with the podcast, articles, mentoring, and so on eat up 10-20 hours a week.
But because I love both my professional career and the work of an aspiring philosopher, I struggle to define it as something that I don’t want to do. To me, work is action in service of the greater good. That’s how it should be seen.
The main point here is that many people inherently do not like their work and work shitty jobs because they are defining work as something that they don’t want to do. I’ll break this down in a second from the Stoic viewpoint, but nevertheless, this fact - that many do not enjoy their work - is what leads to this notion of following your passion. If you follow your passion, after all, you won’t dislike your work!
Passion and One’s Nature
Now, I’m going to break apart this notion of the “shitty job”. Certainly, there are boring jobs out there. And, in fact, there are useless jobs out there. There are many jobs, mostly in the office environment, that aren’t really useful. They don’t need to exist. The work can be done by fewer people at the very least.
These are the jobs that people hate because they inherently feel like they’re not useful. They inherently feel like what they are doing day in and day out doesn’t really contribute to the world in a meaningful way.
Then there are jobs that are run by people who are simply not on the path to righteousness. Their aim is for money, and they’ll do whatever it takes to get it. Their leadership mentality is cracking the whip, not encouraging people to take ownership of their role in the organization.
This is another group of jobs that most people would deem “shitty”. They don’t feel like they are part of something meaningful and worthwhile because it’s not built on the principles of virtue. I do have to add the caveat here that, sometimes, these jobs are all people have available to them to support their families. I would argue that there are often ways out that we can’t always see, but I want to make it clear that working a job like this is an indifferent, and it can be aligned with Stoicism if you’re doing it to support your family and you literally have no other option.
Those types of jobs - the ones where we are doing useless things, and those where we are working for terrible people - are soul-killing. The reason is because you are living according to something that isn’t good. You are voluntarily choosing to work with a company that you know is not virtuous. And if you are in one of those jobs, I’d encourage you to try and escape if you are able. I know it’s not easy. It’s very difficult, in fact. But we’re talking about your soul here.
However, there are also many people who are working for good people and a good company who are doing something useful yet, despite this, still are miserable at work. What do we make of this?
Remember: Your Passion is an Indifferent
The Stoics do have this idea that we should all aim to “live according to Nature”, and part of what that means is living according to your personal nature. Some jobs are better suited for us than others. Introverts gravitate towards computer programming, while extroverts gravitate towards nursing! Conscientious hardasses (like me) gravitate towards engineering, while more open individuals take on creative fields.
And that is true - some jobs seem to fit us better than others, and we should aim to acquire such jobs. However, the Stoics also have this notion that all externals are indifferent. In this context, that means that, given that a job is working for the greater good, you can find contentment in any job.
You could be the best and happiest janitor in the world, who takes pride in cleaning offices for people to go to and get their work done and contribute to the world.
And then the question becomes: well, if that’s true, that we can be happy with any job aligned with the greater good, then why not just pull a random job out of a hat and work at that?
And that’s a great question! Why not?
The answer is that there are such things as “preferred indifferents”. You do, absolutely, have a right to prefer certain jobs over others. You do not, however, have the right to attach your flourishing to any particular job.
What does this like in practice? Let’s go through a few examples.
Life is a Marathon, Not a Sprint
Let’s say you are about to graduate high school and are considering different career paths. If your family has given you the opportunity to choose any field, then you can choose any field! If you want to be a kinesiologist and help people return from physical injuries, that’s amazing! Go do it.
If, however, you don’t have access to any financial aid that can offer this to you, you have to think about this a bit. Maybe the road is a bit longer for you. Maybe you have to go work at Starbucks for 10 years to save up enough money to study. Maybe, during that time, you can study by yourself on the side, honing your knowledge.
Considering yourself a victim because you were '“less well-off” than someone else isn’t useful, and it certainly won’t make you happy. You have to meet yourself where you are, right now.
We’re best off thinking of life as a marathon regarding our preferred indifferents (like which job we work) as opposed to a sprint. We all have different starting points. Some start further ahead than others, and that’s okay. Dear friend: you can’t control which cards you are dealt. You can’t control how rich your family is or even how much opportunity surrounds you. All you have control over is your judgements, intentions, and actions.
You can’t control which cards you are dealt.
Are you going to hold the very anti-Stoic opinion that being born into a poor family is bad? Or are you going to transcend that like the Stoic you’re aspiring to be, and consider it for exactly what it is: indifferent.
So: should you follow your passion in life? Yea. Sure. Why not? Just remember that there is so very little that is actually up to you and that you can be happy right here right now if you only turn on the light.
Support the Show
You can expect one free episode of the podcast every single Tuesday. These episodes will either be a 20-minute (or so) solo episode diving deep into a single philosophical topic, or a guest episode, where I bring on incredible guests to chat philosophy.
For the full Strong Stoic experience, I encourage you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. You’ll get access to premium episodes of the Paradoxically Speaking podcast with Joshua Bertolotti, access to my Steps to Success interview series, a bi-weekly exclusive article analyzing a particular quote, and additional benefits from time to time.
***If you’d like to become a paid member but cannot afford it, feel free to contact me directly; I’ll happily provide a complimentary membership (no questions asked).
Stay Connected
Brandon Tumblin is most well-known for his podcast, The Strong Stoic Podcast, where he discusses philosophical ideas (solo and guest episodes).
Brandon is also a writer for THE STOIC, the official journal of The Stoic Gym.