You see most people don’t see why this is so important, to live a life of passion.
The thing is : I’m sorry to say this but in a 24 hour day with around 12 hours spent on the grinds of day to day existence spending 8 hours on your job means in most ways your job is your life. This is why you can’t just phone in your job.
See A Life of Beauty, A Life of Happiness, and A Life of Passion; I believe for most people, cannot be separated. You seldom see people with a life of no or limited passion living a beautiful life. These things are aspects and results of each other.
PS: I understand that we cannot be too passionate about something because like a fire we would just run out of fuel. Life is in someways more of a marathon than a 100 meter dash. What I’m really against is how we seem to believe we can turn our passions on and off. I believe sometimes we need a break but we must understand that it is a break. I had about more than a month of Sick Leaves plus Vacation Leaves last year. half of those were for vacations and the other half was because I couldn’t just go to work and phone it in. I go to work because I was inspired to work. If I wasn’t inspired and I wasn’t being required by my boss then I just didn’t go.
Phoning it in
This was sort of shocking, at least to me:
I was talking to a religious leader, someone who runs a congregation. She made it clear to me that on many days, it’s just a job. A job like any other, you show up, you go through the motions, you get paid.
I guess we find this disturbing because spiritual work should be real, not faked.
But isn’t your work spiritual?
I know doctors, lawyers, waiters and insurance brokers who are honestly and truly passionate about what they do. They view it as an art form, a calling, and an important (no, an essential) thing worth doing.
In fact, I don’t think there’s a relationship between what you do and how important you think the work is. I think there’s a relationship between who you are and how important you think the work is.
Life’s too short to phone it in.