Finding your life's passion


dogsofworr

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During a long overnight round table discussion amongst fellow objectivists, I learned that my wife had struggled with discovering her life's passion (which she discovered some years after we married - sailing). I grew up with a passion for motocross from a pretty young age both as a participant and spectator. I guess I didn't really realize that most people lack a passion in life.

Our children, now 22 years old, seem to not have yet discovered their passion and are drifting thru life. I did a little google search and found a topic on Oprah that mentioned that 70% of people lack a passion in life.

Anyone have any advice on finding one's passion or helping someone else discover their passion? Please share how you came to discover your own passion.

For me, the study of philosophy, discovering freedom issues like the right to arms, and mastering a rifle were all peripheral interests...interests that I believe set the foundation for the living of life, but were not themselves my own life long passion.

http://www.raggedyedge.net

Edited by dogsofworr
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It's true that most people do not have a central passion that motivates them, but you appear to believe that somewhere inside each person such a passion exists, and one needs only to discover it. I think you need to check this premise. Why must one have a central, lifelong passion? You say that your sons have not yet "discovered" their passion, and are therefore drifting through life. But the lack of a central passion does not mean one must drift without purpose or goals. We all have interests, or can discover interests. To choose a career or course of action from among those interests can make for a fully satisfying and productive life. And even then, one's life need not be formed by a single interest; one might decide to follow a certain interest, such as teaching history, for instance, for some years, then switch to another, such as sales or writing or perhaps using the skills one has learned to teach a different subject. There are no hard and fast rules by which to set the course of one's life.

Alternatively, and this is not uncommon, some people do discover, sometimes quite late in life, a passion they did not have before, and they set out to pursue it for their remaininmg years.

What matters is to do work that interests one -- and to consider oneself fortunate to be able to do so -- and to do it as well and as conscientiously as one can.

Barbara

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I think this is a very interesting subject. I don't feel that I have a passion in life. I have pursued my interests, and am doing pretty much what I had wanted to do when I was in high school and college - programming. I have a PhD in computer science; I don't have any interest in being a manager, and I have been about as successful as you can be without going into management in my field. But, it's not the kind of interest that I'd happily work 12 or 15 hour days at. I've always wished I had that kind of drive for the things that interest me, but I think it's just not my nature.

This reminded me of the movie "Adaptation", which I highly recommend (the screenplay SO ingenious and quirky!). "Life's passion" is an important theme in that movie. The orchid thief character has the unusual ability to throw himself completely into a certain pursuit for a period of time, and then to completely abandon that interest for a new passion later. I think those of us who don't have a passion, wish we could be that way. But maybe it's a personality trait? I think the best we can do is to remain open to new experiences, and then we can at least remain interested in life, even if we're never consumed by an obsession as some are.

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My great passion is climbing. It can be climbing on rock, snow or ice; it can also be hiking to summits or backpacking into remote wilderness. I was 25 when I really became a fanatic about it. My rock and ice climbing was largely self-taught, reading actual experiences by great climbers, and my greatest and most fulfilling climbs were solo.

I remember trying to work out the sequence of moves on a climb I had not yet done. I may have backed off and retreated from some climbs a dozen times when not yet ready to fully “commit” to them. Before going to sleep, I would mentally rehearse the moves and the focus needed for an as yet unclimbed route. When I awoke in the morning, I would continue the rehearsal and the focus, steeling myself for the moment of truth. Then, at the point when I was truly ready, I would go climb the damn thing. Ecstasy.

.

-Ross Barlow.

.

http://zenwind.blogspot.com

Climbing Log, Blog for Poems, Reviews, Aesthetic Musings.

.

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During a long overnight round table discussion amongst fellow objectivists, I learned that my wife had struggled with discovering her life's passion (which she discovered some years after we married - sailing). I grew up with a passion for motocross from a pretty young age both as a participant and spectator. I guess I didn't really realize that most people lack a passion in life.

Our children, now 22 years old, seem to not have yet discovered their passion and are drifting thru life. I did a little google search and found a topic on Oprah that mentioned that 70% of people lack a passion in life.

Anyone have any advice on finding one's passion or helping someone else discover their passion? Please share how you came to discover your own passion.

For me, the study of philosophy, discovering freedom issues like the right to arms, and mastering a rifle were all peripheral interests...interests that I believe set the foundation for the living of life, but were not themselves my own life long passion.

http://www.raggedyedge.net

I think in terms of missions, rather than passions. After we discover our talents we might or might not take up missions or quests.

I discovered my talent and quest by accident. I found out I was the Little Boy in the Hans Christian Anderson story about the Emperor and His New Clothes. Fate spake unto me and said your mission, should you decide to accept it, is to tell the Emperors of the world that they are bare-ass naked. (Insert -Mission Impossible- theme right here). And so I do, as I can and when I can. I find being a gad-fly is loads of fun and bugs the shit out of people and it is done only to tell The Truth. Sometimes it gets people angry or annoyed and sometimes it gets them to thinking. It always gives me a charge, which is why I do it. Anything I do, I do because it promotes my joy. May God strike me dead or turn me into a smoking puddle of goo if I ever do anything altruistic.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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  • 2 weeks later...

Baal:

~ Regarding your last request to...uh...her, to prevent you from acting against your interests: if she granted your request, merely because you called on her to, would she be altruistic, or, would it benefit her in some way?

~ Come to think of it, is any version of 'god' an altruistic one? (Christ don't count; he just got a pre-ordained hassle from humans and then got on the shuttle back to home.)

:devil:

LLAP

J:D

Edited by John Dailey
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John,

Can you imagine Bob in a strip-tease joint?

:)

Michael

I would not have to tell the girls they are bare ass naked. They already know it.

Ba'al Chatzaf

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  • 3 months later...

Ok! So we've all reached a consensus that life's passions should somehow involve a stripper pole in a nightclub!

See how productive we can be when we all put our heads together? :P

Seriously though, B Branden's points about not having to 'discover ones purpose' is likely helpful to many.

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  • 4 weeks later...

This all depends on what we define as a passion. A leisure activity we enjoy immensly (which isn't too hard to come by), or an effort/work that we feel must be done? The former is an end unto itself.. the latter is a means to an end, though the means can be enjoyable in a sense... ie, being "in the zone", exercising your abilities.

It's hard for me to find the motivation for my favored leisure activities when I feel I'm neglecting some other need. I wouldn't call it a "purpose".. just a desired effort. Now I have to ask myself: what do I give a fuck about? What matters to me the most, existentially?

It comes down to one question for me: What does it mean to move forward?

Edited by Faust06
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Thanks, Barbara and Laure. I was taken aback there... I mean having come from Solo Passion and all that kick-ass stuff that I was never a part of... then to find the question here... And I thought of Howard Roark, for instance, or any of the heroes and heroines.

"The Passing Interests of Ayn Rand"

See? That does not exactly cut the mustard, does it?

But, I ran through a lot of passions, jilted and unrequited since I was a teenager, passions, mostly for business and technology inspired by Ayn Rand, of course. I threw myself totally and completely into one consuming passion after another: trucking, computer programming, robotics, numismatics. In the 1980s, I lived a cyberpunk fantasy, working on cutting edge technology projects by day and writing about hacking by night. I interviewed Timothy Leary and Mitch Kapor and advocated for Craig Neidorf and Steve Jackson, all of that for Loompanics, as well as for computer magazines and then into robotics for a Japanese firm (Kawasaki). It was like being in a William Gibson story... and then... numismatics, the art and science of the forms and uses of money. I expected the Ferengi Planet, and there were some... but mostly, I found a shuck and jive... It would not be worth my life to expose one of the largest and oldest firms as unabashed hoaxers ... I still honor money. I still write for numismatic magazines... I still wriite computer programs... I have a new career (but not a passsion) in security, and just sent a query letter to a firm that markets security robots, something I know about.

Passions? No, not any more...

But, maybe again someday... maybe out there is another soul searing time freezing desire and aspiration....

Edited by Michael E. Marotta
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