"I'd be happy to hear your tips for a 30 year old in consulting, trying to distill the idea of what I'm most passionate about, and how I can wrap that into my career. I can't recall if this was initially posed to me, or if I'd come across it online, but it's one I've admittedly struggle to answer over time. I've bounced around the ideas of problem solving, helping people, or enjoying music and its associated experiences, but nothing has quite stuck yet."
The young man also attached a clip from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos with his take on passion.
What a wonderful question and what an honor to be approached to give my thoughts about it.
Before sharing part of my answer, let me post something I just read by John Steinbeck in his book East of Eden. Although it may not help my young friend directly, here Steinbeck is addressing the question of passion in the broadest of terms.
At such a time (he is referring to 1900) it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in?
What must I fight for and what must I fight against?
Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and the spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything.The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.
An now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.
And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing which can by inspection destroy our system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and I will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost.
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