Doing What You Love Vs. Loving What You Do
People say to do what you love, and you’ll be successful and happy.
While this is very true, I think it is often taken the wrong way. People often romanticize this and turn it into a black-and-white, cause and effect rule. Especially in college. Many pick something they’ve never had any experience in and spend years dedicating themselves to that romanticized concept. They build up ideas and expectations of what their life will be like. If they chose a path they love, their first job, and all the jobs following will always be happy. Always being happy is an unhealthy expectation for a career, but also a damaging perspective for life in general.
I’m not saying don’t be passionate about your career path, or don’t have lofty dreams. I’m also not at all saying the key to life is to be depressed and expect nothing. There is absolutely nothing wrong with passionately giving your all and expecting great things. It will most often lead you to success. I’m just remarking on a rather negative perspective in which people focus so wholeheartedly on achieving idealistic, uninterrupted happiness that they end up never appreciating the beautiful variety of small moments and details their life and work already has to offer.
Here is a quote from one of my favorite books in which a detective showcases the kind of appreciative perspective I’m talking about.
“Out of absolutely nowhere I felt a sudden, sweet shot of joy, piercing and distilled as the jolt I imagine heroin users get when the fix hits the vein. It was my partner bracing herself on her hands as she slid fluidly off the desk, it was the neat practiced movement of flipping my notebook shut one-handed, it was my superintendent wriggling into his suit jacket and covertly checking his shoulders for dandruff, it was the garishly lit office with a stack of marker-labeled case files sagging in the corner and evening rubbing up against the window. It was the realization, all over again, that this was real and it was my life. Maybe Katy Devlin, if she had made it that far, would have felt this way about blisters on her toes, the pungent smell of sweat and floor wax in the dance studios, the early-morning breakfast bells raced down echoing corridors. Maybe she, like me, would have loved the tiny details and the inconveniences even more dearly than the wonders, because they are the things that prove you belong.” -Tana French, In The Woods