Passion.
Dear God, I hate that word.
I’ve already talked about irritating clichés and jargon, but passion is perhaps the one overused word that I despise the most. It seems to be the vogue term of our age: the be-all, end-all and cure-all. Apparently, you can do anything as long as you are passionate. Conquer the world. Become a millionaire. Excel at your job. Find inner happiness. Et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Furthermore, it seems that every company out there wants people who are ‘passionate about what they do’ to work for them. Recently I have noticed this a lot, as someone looking at entering their first career. Almost every graduate job appears to specify ‘passion’ as a key requirement, regardless of the actual industry. This can leave me and my fellow students in something of a pickle. How do you show passion for a career that you have very little prior exposure to? Or one which involves sitting in front of a screen analysing data for most of the day? Indeed, being passionate about certain jobs might make you sound a bit mental, to be honest. Passionate about tax? Hmm. Or the ballpoint pen industry? Right. Or even about excel charts? Oh dear.
I am not necessarily mocking these particular professions and industries, by the way. What I am criticising is the application of the term ‘passion’ in relation to them. I believe that we now overuse this word to the point when it has almost eclipsed any other positive epithet. You are either ‘passionate’ about your career/field/industry, or you find it boring and uninspiring – there seems to be no middle-ground any more. This is a bit of a twenty-first century fad, as far as I can tell. Nobody that I know of my parents’ generation seems to be brimming with passion for their career, but most appear to get on well enough. If asked, they will often say they enjoy their job, find it interesting or even rewarding, but ‘passion’ is never a term that enters their vocabulary.
The unspoken ‘passion or nothing’ emphasis has been rather worrying for me, as someone who – as of this moment – cannot really think of any field that I am passionate about. This is as true of academic study as it is of potential careers. I study English Literature at university. I really enjoy reading, I’m pretty good at it and generally find the intellectual challenge stimulating and rewarding. At times I can even find it inspiring. But I could not say that I am really passionate about English Literature – and I am a bit sick of being told that I should be, to be honest. Why can’t finding something interesting suffice anymore?
Let me give you an example. Recently, as contextual background for an extended essay, I have been reading a lot of historical work on the early Church in post-Roman Britain. Was I enraptured by it? No. Was I filled with passionate energy by accounts of the Pelagian Heresy and the conversion of the Anglo-Saxon pagans? No. However, I did find it intriguing, and was quite happy to sit quietly in the café for a few hours reading various books on the subject and taking down notes.
Similarly, I am not looking to ‘follow my passion’ when it comes to careers – principally because I don’t have a clue what this mystical ‘passion’ is. Instead, I am hoping to find a career that I can find stimulating enough so that I can make a success of it and reap some rewards; material, intellectual or otherwise. I’m not going to pretend I am passionate about this or that business, because in all honesty I won’t be. Maybe one day I will discover my ‘passion’ and strike a new path and follow it. Maybe, as Cal Newport suggests, I might even become passionate about the career I choose. Maybe. But until then, I’m happy to settle for a job that is engaging and rewarding.
Some people are passionate about a certain area of life – truly so. I’ve met a few. Some of them – especially those who are extremely creative – are indeed following their passion. Good luck to them. But I am pretty sure I am not the only young twenty-something who doesn’t really have a single driving passion yet and just wants to get on in the world. It would be nice if everybody would stop demanding that we spend time being passionate, and ask that we be bloody good at what we do instead.
Thought provoking. I had not noticed that trend until reading this article.
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“material, intellectual or otherwise” embrace the power of ‘and”.
Otherwise, I completely agree. I’m on the other end, careerwise. I’ve pretty much always enjoyed what I did, was good at it, and it had its rewards. But passion? You’ve got to be kidding. For the person you love? Maybe. For work, meh. Work is what one does so that one can do what one wants. It’s best if you enjoy it, but beyond that, it’s a job, not an affair.
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Glad to hear that I’m not just naively shouting into the dark, then!
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Nah, I hadn’t noticed that trend, but it’s just silly.
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As you no doubt realized, some people are passionate about Pelagianism 🙂 However, I agree that the insistence that the job applicant appear passionate is silly.
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Of course, I didn’t mean to suggest that Pelagianism is inherently boring or anything, just that I personally didn’t need to be empassioned by it to find it interesting and work with the material.
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Sometimes passion can be a bad idea. It leads to fanaticism, dogmatic thinking, and inflexibility. A zen-like detachment from the outcome of our work is actually better, I think. I mean to do things with awareness and to consider how our actions affect others. and to focus on what we are doing, and then to let go of it once complete. Passion can actually get in the way of all of this.
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I’ve definitely seen this a lot, and felt about the same about it as you do. It’s a pretty honest desire of employers though, if you think about it. They want unabashed enthusiasm from their younger hires, whether for the work itself, or for the corporate roleplay that makes the organization or social group at work function. The word “passion” just expresses it in a way that reduces a perfectly good word into yet more corporate-speak.
It’s also sortof a byproduct of the fad where tech companies, and especially businesses with a social media element, decorate their offices like kindergardens…
Also, consider … a bunch of people really into what they’re doing is more fun than a place where everyone is jaded (the dark humor of these places notwithstanding) or even just cold but professional… It’s good to find work you can be in harmony with.
No pressure to get it right the first time around, few people do. You can find great people in a bad workplace, good work in a socially dead place, good everything, bad everything – any combination is possible. Good luck!
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I get that enthusiasm is important of course – nobody, least of all me, wants to work with demotivated people – it is just that passion (as you rightly say) is a poor choice of word to use (and signally overused). You don’t need to be passionate to enjoy your work and do it well.
Also, I totally get what you are saying about corporate fads – its not just tech companies any more. I had a look at a law firm once which, if I remember, had a ‘puppy-party’ day or something….(shudder).
Many thanks for the comment and advice!
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Reblogged this on Politics in Theory and Practice and commented:
An incisive critique of mindless recruiting jargon. I highly recommend.
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hahaha great post- and so true!! Let’s be honest, most people aren’t all that passionate about a lot of aspects of their jobs, if at all. And yes, for a lot of people that’s a terrible, shocking thing to say. But the truth is, people sometimes have other things going on in their lives and maybe the job is just a means to an ends (I don’t even see why this is a far-out idea- it’s not like peasant farming in the middle ages was a “passion” for anybody). So of course, when it comes to the job market there’s a very ridiculous thing going on where, say, the interviewee pretends to be super-psyched about working in tax and the interviewer pretends to believe them. And yeah I agree that you shouldn’t have to be passionate when interested would suffice. And even if you love something and are “passionate” about it, they’ll be parts that are still boring. I reckon employees should start worrying more about competence too.
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Glad I’m not the only one!
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Hehe it happens to be something my brother goes on about, so I had a preprepared rant 😉
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Haha.
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