“You can’t win, Darth. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you could possibly imagine.” Obi-Wan Kenobi, Star Wars IV: A New Hope
Yes, it’s made the rounds for the past several years, but sometimes something speaks to me, gets stuck in the recesses of my brain, pops out unexpectedly and just can’t be ignored. This is one of those things. I’m not a Mac devotee (although I know a few people who pray before the alter of Steve Jobs – hello Eileen), but I appreciate what he has done and the reality that his risks, successes and failures have made him (and everything he seems to touch) into what he is (and they are) today.
You may disagree, but I don’t believe that everyone can make themselves blaze a new path. Many people need the safety and security of a routine existence, e.g., forty hours a week and a steady paycheck. I not going to pretend that you can lump such people into a single employment category, educational bracket or intellectual ability set. That is ridiculous. While stability seekers aren’t confined to any one type of job or work environment, I will say that I don’t generally find them in business for themselves – too much stress from the unknown, from the ups and downs of market conditions. (I do employment research when I’m not training as a Jedi.) They generally don’t want passion so much as they need stability and security. I find stability seekers to be some of the best, albeit not the most exciting, employees because they have a highly focused drive to keep their jobs and will stick around for years.
Now, before you start warming up your fingers in anger, please understand that I know and love many people with this personality makeup. Indeed, I don’t see it as a personality flaw. It’s just a part of who they are. Some have argued that all people are naturally creative and daring at birth and are only made into security seekers through an over emphasis on obedience in the early years (such as in very strict households) and from creativity crushing ”there’s only one right answer”-based educational systems that systematically eliminate creativity from the learning process. But, I have known little, little kids that were stability seekers from birth. They are normal, bright, happy and loving kids and get along well in life for the most part. And they are kids that absolutely live for their schedule, much to the chagrin of a more relaxed mom and/or dad. These stability seeking kids are very likely to have a mini freaky-freakout if something unexpected (even if it’s something they enjoy) is tossed into their day unannounced.
I find that stability seekers love the word no. I don’t mean in a necessarily negative manner, but as in: ”No, that won’t work,” as their first reaction to a new idea. “No, we don’t do things that way,” when seeing someone try to change something at work. “No, mom cuts my sandwiches into quarters on the diagonal.” Once you can convince them of the superiority of your suggestion, (and that may a real job, in and of itself) you’ll have a staunch supporter from that moment forward.
Now, back to Mr. Jobs’ speech. I agree with him (even after all of the above) about following your passion for a fulfilling and life-consuming vocation. Following your passion will move you into places you can’t even imagine, have you doing things you wouldn’t have believed possible and get you dropped on your toukus more often than you really want to know. There’s no guarantee you’ll be happy, no guarantee you’ll succeed and no guarantee that you won’t change directions later.
Passion requires risk, a willingness to let go of almost everything you’re used to, and an openness to – even a courting of - failure. Best of all, passion requires a love of change. Following a passion immediately demands your willingness to be different, to let go of your previous expectations (and anyone else’s), and to bypass the norm. When I was in graduate school, all my classmates were lining up internships with solid companies in their hometowns or in their current places of business. I began to follow suit, doing what you do. Internship with SuperMondoInternationalCompany X. Check. Oh, baby, I was going to have it made. As a break from the classroom routine, one of my professors had a couple of previous students come in and talk about their interships in Ireland. One lived in a convent just outside of Dublin and worked with some nuns providing services to the poor. The other lived in a small western coastal village working for a governmental service organization while her husband spent the winter trying to figure out how to get, and keep, a peat fire burning. On a whim, and because we had some extra time left over, our professor also showed a video about a for-profit agency in The Netherlands that night.
Afterwards, during break, all the students sat around and talked about how cool an intership in Ireland would be. Over the following days and weeks, my buddy Eileen and I started thinking, “Seriously, we should do that.” Dad Windu, my husband of not yet one year, was less than enthusiastic. Eileen’s boyfriend (and now husband) was less than enthusiastic. Our classmates were sure that we would never get jobs afterwards. My academic advisor said I was committing career suicide. My in-laws were quite sure that it would be the death-knell of my marriage. The “yeah but’s” had started for everyone except Eileen and me. I don’t know why. I still don’t know why it never occurred to either of us that we couldn’t do this, do it well and reap the rewards afterwards. We never did get to Ireland during our intership, not even to visit, but after a few unexpected turns along the way, we ended up interning in that great little for-profit center in The Netherlands under one of the best supervisors we could ever have asked for. We even ended up working for the center after graduation for a year and a half, simply because we wrote up a consulting proposal one night after saying, “Wouldn’t it be great if we could…”
Most of the homeschoolers I know are passion seekers, as are many of their children, although not all. For those of you other passion seekers out there, adult and child alike, don’t wait for others to agree.
Act. Do what you love. Fail spectacularly a few times. Try again.
