The Passion Myth
It’s been almost three years since I left my corporate job. And I still haven’t figured out what I want to do when I grow up (other than the defiant response “well, I just don’t want to grow up!”). I’ve spent endless hours visioning, removing blocks, working through books and homework from a coach (or two) trying to figure out what my purpose is and find my passion. It’s been fun, with some painful detours, and I’ve learned a lot about myself. I didn’t find my purpose, nor my passion, and my vision sits there on the internet somewhere.
The skeptical part of my brain took a while to get through the popular strategies to point out that maybe there was something amiss here. Maybe it wasn’t that I haven’t tried hard enough. That I haven’t found the right book, coach, exercise. That I lack focus. That my friends aren’t supportive enough. That if only I lived in community, things would be so much easier to implement. Oh, I am so lonely! Why doesn’t anyone support me?!?
I don’t know why it took me so long to see the similarity of this with another myth that I (and many others) are working to debunk: The Soulmate Myth. The idea that there is one person out there who will complete us and we’ll live happily ever after. Actually, this is really a myth cluster. It starts with the myth that we are incomplete just the way we are, that we have to find someone to complete us. And then there is the myth that there is such a person out there, that “all” we have to do is find him or her. Finally, if this happens, we are promised eternal happiness.
Well, you can probably tell from my snarky choice of words that I don’t believe in any of that: Neither that we are incomplete unless coupled nor that there is a perfect mate nor that there is such a thing as eternal happiness. And, of course, I can back that up with evidence (or rather point you to the person who has devoted her life to presenting that evidence).
And yet, I believed that there is one passion/purpose out there that I just needed to find and then I’d be eternally happy! There are people out there who are living this (just like there are people out there who are living the soulmate myth)! Of course, on closer inspection we notice that it’s not quite as idyllic. The most important thing we uncover on closer inspection, is that these people stumbled onto their passion/purpose. They didn’t spent years trying to find it.
What happens if we apply this analysis to the passion myth? It turns out to be a myth cluster, too. First, there is an assumption that we are somehow incomplete or deficient, a failure really, when we don’t have a passion. Maybe because we have lots of things that we enjoy or we have serial passions – we loose interest in something after a while and get excited about something new. That is not the way we’re supposed to live, according to this myth. We are supposed to be married to one person for life, oh, wait, we’re supposed to have a passion for life and only one. This ties in with the second myth as well: That there is ONE thing that will fire us up, one perfect passion, one purpose. And somehow we were born with this, which is a claim that has always puzzled me because it raises the question: Who or what put it in us? A question that is too religious/spiritual for this atheist (I explored this more here).
So, maybe just like there is no soulmate out there, just like we are perfectly lovable no matter what our coupled relationship status, maybe there is no passion out there and we can live a perfectly happy life without pursuing one. Just like I started to invest more time and energy in my friendships, I can invest more time and energy in the topics that I find interesting. And just like friendships change and evolve – and sometimes end – our interests change and evolve. That does not mean there is something wrong with us or we haven’t spent enough time unearthing our passion. It simply means that everything in life changes.
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Thanks for this really insightful post, I think what you say makes a lot of sense. I haven’t found my “passion” in life either …
oh, dear, this brings up a lot of ‘stuff’ for me…../like, in our still dominantly patriarchal culture, male-type strengths are still stressed, such as the male brain tendency to focus more intensely on one or few issues at a time, differing from female brain function which spreads itself over more issues at once…….logic has it that neither way is ‘better’, but the balance of the two ways needs to become much more prominent and respected than it is now……..
Wow! Thanks for pointing this out, Shula! I hadn’t even made the connection between “lack of focus” and patriarchal values… It reminded me of an experiment that seem to indicate that girl’s brains can multitask more easily than boy’s brains – at least in terms of being able to cook a meal using multiple pots (I think that’s what they did in the experiment… It’s been a while since I watched it…)
reading this blog has inspired this analysis: in a civilization that has lost the greatest passion of all -THE ART OF LIVING TRULY – we are left to find some artificial and limiting VOCATION instead…..and our very humanity gets distorted in that sad process !!
And what I find saddest of all is that this is even infiltrating “alternative” approaches, which after just a bit of scratching turn out to not be that alternative after all because they still rest on the main premise of our civilization: There is only one right way to live. (This myth, btw, is something that Daniel Quinn exposes in his books).
ah, yes, and how frightening and awkward the concept of CHANGE is in our culture……and how hard to take in the reality that there are many many more questions than answers in our real world.
……and how endless contradictions keep haunting our thoughts because we have been duped with fossillized belief-systems that insist there is ONE TRUTH, ONE GOD-(male, of course), and ONE RIGHT WAY TO BE…………whew, so many sacred cows imposing rediculous burdens on our relationships.