I am tired of people saying, “you show real passion for your work” or “he/she does not seem to have passion for his/her job”. What is all this nonsense about “passion for your job”? and what does it have to do with work? Are we lobotomized? Yes, we are.
Hey… why are you so annoyed? Relax!
Smell the roses…blow the candles…smell the roses…blow the candles…twenty more times please! Ok, I am relaxed now.
Let me go to the dictionary first. Passion is defined as a “strong and barely controllable emotion”.
So… what is your point? You will see…
If we start dissecting the elements of passion the first aspect that draws our attention is strength. This is something measurable, it suggests a somewhat linear characteristic of the concept at hand, as if we could have 7 pounds 8 ounces of strength or 51 feet of strength but never a yes/no answer for strength. There is an inherent concept of finitude or limitation, it is something measurable as it develops on a scale. The evaluation of strength is always relative to other parameters, a specific outcome or the gap between what is and what is expected. This concept is in opposition to the boundlessness of presence or absence.
The second element of the definition is “barely controllable”, this sounds like the Millennium Falcon at light speed chasing the Emperor and his death’s star. Something beyond our reasonable means to manage, something that puts us immediately at the mercy of the circumstances surrounding us.
The third element of the definition involves emotion. Defined as “a natural instinctive state of mind deriving from one’s circumstances, mood, or relationships with others”, this is a state of mind defined by the external elements of one’s surroundings both physical and spiritual. Emotion is defined by levers that lay beyond our control; you are just a byproduct of a specific combination of circumstances. You could argue that your mood is under your control, but that is not totally true if you believe in biological psychiatry and read the sign in 72nd Street and Broadway Av in the Upper West, New York “Depression is a flaw in chemistry not character”.
So, we define a person having passion for his or her work as something of value; and it so happens that passion is something limited in scope, difficult or impossible to manage and absolutely outside our control mechanisms. Why would anyone want to have such a combination of bad actors?
What does it mean to do a good job? What is the moral contract for a job? Is it different for a doctor a pilot or a mason?
The reason we should do a good job is because we have a moral commitment to ourselves. As Augustine says “we become what we love”, and it is through our commitment that we come to love something. That is what makes us all equals at work, whether a pilot a doctor or a janitor we all have to make the moral commitment to do our best, put the effort and talent to do our best. Once that commitment is made, the job is different for everyone but those are the less relevant details.
Does it mean we all do the job we love above any other thing on earth? Of course not, sometimes we will do a job to put food on the table and our love will be in a hobby for example. But our moral commitment to do our best will allow us to draw pride and happiness from a job well done, and then we can enjoy our other interests.
So, let us do away with passion for work, and bring back a moral commitment to work that will make us happy and energetic.
Reading list
Confessions by St Augustine, published almost 17 hundred years ago and still in print
The road to character by D Brooks, 2015