Passion Used to Mean Suffering. Now It Means Side Hustles. How a Perfectly Good Word Got Ruined
Passion: The word we've ruined?
Passion Used to Mean Suffering. Now It Means Side Hustles.How a Perfectly Good Word Got Ruined
Three words that really piss in my Corn Flakes - 'Whats your passion?'
This morning I read a piece by Aldo Kane, the former Royal Commander cum adventure safety expert on what it means to be human in a time of AI. A most excellent piece well worth a read. Over the year, I have listened to him many times on podcasts and overall I have great respect for him (and maybe even a small crush).
Then I read the lines "What is your true passion that you haven’t been listening to? How can you start to make this a reality?"
There it is - the P word.
Immediately, I feel anxious and defective. At the age of 47 I have yet to discover my untapped innate skills of being a flamenco guitar player or obsessively collecting Art Deco vases with a life goal of appearing on the Antiques Roadshow.
'Passion' has been flogged to death by modern day coaches. It is a word so overused it no longer means anything.
Before I proceed, let's open a dictionary.
The word "passion" originates from the Latin word "passio," which means "suffering" or "enduring."
According to the Cambridge Dictionary to have a passion for something is to have "an extreme interest in or wish for doing something, such as a hobby, activity, etc"
Interest is defined as "the feeling of wanting to give your attention to something or of wanting to be involved with and to discover more about something"
Passion says: "I've found THE THING."
Interest says: "I want to know more about that."
Curiosity says: "What's that? How does it work? What if I..."
Professor Peter Higgs spent 50 odd years proving his theory of the Higgs boson. That sort of dedication shows a deep curiosity and life long passion for physics otherwise why would you focus on one problem for 50 years. Aldo Kane seems to have extreme interest in operating in extreme environments under extreme conditions.
Asking someone to conjure up "extreme interest" is seldom useful advice. It is not something that can be manufactured. Most of us are interested in more than one thing. Asking someone to "find your passion" assumes that they have one single burning obsession that they have yet to discover. There are just things you find yourself interested in, in different amounts, on different days.
I have spent considerable energy looking for THE THING.
One recurring intrusive thought of mine is worrying about the next chapter.
I NEED to find the THING. What is the next THING!?!
I am a deeply curious person who learns by building and doing. For me it's the why rather than the what. This is why AI is working for me, it's a new way of figuring out why something works. Any health initiatives such as climbing mountains, running long distances or strength training works for me because I need the fast feedback loops. I tend to do things in bursts, go deep for a while and then once I've figured it out it's time to find the next problem.
I've thrown myself into learning about AI because (1) my company has given me time and budget (2) I am driven by job loss anxiety. Am I passionate about it? Fuck no. I'm cynical about the utility, horrified by the ethics, and flabbergasted that something this toxic and environmentally damaging is being rolled out while we're told to park our discernment at the door.
In recent months every time I've found something interesting, my strategic thinking brain is thinking "what would a business plan look like". This is killing any curiosity because I am trying to monetise it. Meanwhile, Claude encourages all my half ass ideas, sitting there like the chief advisor Gríma Wormtongue, whispering into my ear all the while serving King Sam and King Dario
A few months back I was close to signing up for a 12 month nutrition course. I am genuinely interested in learning about the effects of food and exercise on the body therefore it must be my THING. I figured I could swap a tech problem for a nutrition problem. The logical side of my brain could see that the death of Mother was spurring profound questions about my life. Common sense prevailed.
As Aldo Kane states: "Every app, tech or machine you use is optimising your comfort & efficiency and reducing friction. This is making you physically and mentally weaker."
AI fatigue is a thing. It is addictive and it's leaving me feeling burnt out. It's creeping into my weekends and evenings and I've noticed my daily outdoor time has started to degrade as I wait for the dopamine hit from my agent finishing.
So I've booked a few days to do something I am extremely interested in doing: pulling on my hiking boots and reconnecting with my Mothers home of The Joyce Country in Connemara.
Joyce Stack
Hove, Brighton United Kingdom
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