Follow your passion?
Just came back from lunch with a friend of mine and his colleague (will call him Gallard). One thing led to another and the conversation was about working and jobs. Gallard asked me if I read the article from WSJ:
Fail Your Way to Success
I told him that I did (thanks Rog). And, although I liked the article and a lot of the points in it, I didn’t quite agree about the ‘following your passion’ part. He founded that funny, because he happened to be in an absolute agreement with that. Gallard’s point was that following a passion, say to become a firefighter (just an example, could have been teacher or carpenter) may be a noble passion, but if you want to have large family and certain expectations from your lifestyle – it may not be a suitable passion pursuit, compare to, say, attorney (or accountant, programmer, etc.). I told him about Bronnie Ware and her discoveries on regrets and we went back and forth. I tried role-playing as if I was his nephew and asked him his advice on following my passion or not. Long story short, we agreed to disagree and… well, we’ll see if it was our last lunch 🙂
I have a strong opinion about this. But I could be wrong. Gallard is a smart, successful businessman. So is Scott Adams. But I’m still convinced that life is too short and precious to let your passion(s) be compromised.
On an unrelated note, I’m positive that if ADD was discovered disease back when I was in school, I’d be medicated intravenously 14-16 hours a day. Are there people without ADD?
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