Love what you do?

Have you heard of, 'Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life'? It is a general belief that if your "passion" and your career are the same thing, you're living the dream, your work never feels like work, it feels like a lifelong picnic that gives you pleasure and money at the same time, and there's nary a worry on God's green earth for you. But, does it?

When your hobby/passion isn't aligned with your career, the time you get to develop the hobby is limited. You want to make the most of it while you're at it. It's a release from the daily grind, those few golden minutes that take you to your happy place are the source of your serotonin the whole day/week. One would think doing this for life would be the dream!

I am of the opposite opinion. If you had to do what you love for a living and knew that your next salary, which pays your rent, bills, EMIs, insurances, and everything else, essentially your whole life, depended on it, your passion for it would die a slow, painful death.

When something you love doing, your passion becomes your primary source of income, you're doing it all the time. There's no rarity to it, no release from the daily grind. Now you're doing the same thing day in and day out for 8-9 hours a day. And if you're doing the same thing over and over again, you begin to feel like you're stuck in the same rut doing what you used to love and now can't get away from it fast enough. It is no longer the sole thing that brings you happiness.

It is also jarring for some people at first when they start losing their affection for the activity that gave them a purpose and an escape. This may cause them to lose their sense of identity. Something that they loved doing so much that they decided to make it their career and do for their whole life, now no longer holds their interest, and then they have no idea what to do, what to like, if there is anything else they like or are even good at.

When my school ended, I saw my life playing out very in the most ideal way possible. I love cooking, learning, talking, and writing about, basically everything that has to do with food. Seeing the love I had, my 15-year-old mind (after watching 3 Idiots) decided to join a culinary college, learn about culinary arts, and work in a 5-star hotel as a chef.

However, after my internship and three years of the course, when it came to picking a specialization, I chose a department that was far from the Kitchen. The decision was not at all well thought out and baffled everyone, including myself. But now when I look back, I think it was the right decision. I got to know something other than cooking during my specialization, I acquired other skills.

Now I work in a different industry altogether based on what I learned in my specialization. And when I get to cook, the rarity of it is not too much not too less, just perfect, is when I am the happiest. Every time I get the chance, I look forward to cooking for myself and my family. The act of cooking for me relates to the feeling of relaxation, taking a break from my otherwise stressful life. Even when I think or plan about it, it automatically takes me to my happy place.

It's hard for me to imagine myself being happy doing this same thing for 9 or more hours a day endlessly, every day and still love it! Something I love doing, would be associated with stress, monotony, and having my boss, in this case a chef shit on me (metaphorically!) every day. That can make someone stop loving what you do for sure.

Doing what you love or making your hobby/passion, your career can work out for many people, I'm not saying it's wrong to do so. If no one followed their passion, we wouldn't have Tendulkar, Nehwal, Shah Rukh Khan, Gordon Ramsay, Serena Williams, or anyone famous that we ever knew!

But for most of us, it doesn't work out that way. The idea of your passion being your career and making you content is highly romanticized and the reality is as exceptionally rare.

Now, what I write after this might be a little controversial, but I have begun to understand why parents try to urge their children to take up mainstream education and choose that career. If ever some young 'un comes to me about the conundrum where they want to choose an offbeat career, something interesting, exciting, and what brings them happiness, and their parents want them to choose something mainstream/'where there is a lot of scope', I would advise them to get educated in a field of their parent's choice, get some job experience there, and then seek out their passion. So their sense of identity won't shatter if they find out they don't love their passion as much as they thought, and have something to fall back on.

But hey, it's just one person's opinion!

What do you think? You can write to me or comment below!