Nobody cares about your passion.
Work instead towards your Ikigai.
There is a Japanese word called “Ikigai” that is often explained as path to a long, happy, meaningful life. The concept moves beyond the usual, western Baby Boomer advice to “follow your passion,” and instead challenges you to consider the needs and values of others in the world.
To apply Ikigai, you must understand both yourself AND others.
The message “Follow your passion,” is so much simpler, easier and more palatable, it’s typical fodder for pandering commencement speeches.
What this advice ignores is the needs and wants of others. Maybe because “following your passion” is one of the most self-centered things you can do, Ben Horowitz’ 2015 commencement address to the graduating engineers at Columbia University says, “Don’t follow your passion” because it’s a very “me focused idea.”
Terri Trespicio says that the pressure to “follow your passion” is a dangerous idea. She says that “passion is not a plan. It’s a feeling.”
And there are two problems with feelings:
They change. Pete Walker points out that we have lots of different feelings, all at the same time (The Tao of Fully Feeling, 1995).
Feelings can block us from choosing our wantings. There have been many times in my life when I knew I wanted something, but I was either too afraid to ask for it, or too comfortable with what I already had.
The problem with passion, is that derives from feelings. It feels good to think “I’m going to follow my passion, so I can do the things I love!”
But the world does not provide for what you love. The world doesn’t care.
Instead of the self-centered, feel-good trap of following your passion, include in your choices consideration for the needs and goals of others. This requires you to empathize — i.e., to seek to understand the world from another’s point of view so that you can experience their drives, understand their frustrations, and provide something valuable to them.
Once you get away from the idea that we all should just be following your own feeling, it allows you to place some of your attention on others, and enlist them as allies in getting a closer approximation of the life you want.