Undefined

I ranted earlier in this blog about my frustrations with the 'follow your passion' advice. I believed that it created inaction because a lot of people haven't clearly defined their passion, and that uncertainty halts them in their tracks. I still think that is the biggest problem with the advice, but after talking to some people and thinking about it for some time, I'm going to add one more important one that is interesting to explore further - the problem of definition. Let me explain.

I attended my first career fair earlier this fall. I had (what I thought was) a solid resume, a nicely rehearsed pitch, and a black felt fedora with a perky blue feather. What I didn't have, as I explained in my earlier post, was a good answer to the inevitable question 'so what do you want to work on?' I usually answered with something broad like, energy. That question, I believe, is why I still haven't gotten a single response to all my follow-ups and applications. I realize that I probably should have just picked something specific for each company, but it didn't feel honest. Why? Basically, it's because I didn't want to limit myself.

Any time you have to make a choice, science shows, it generates stress. More choices actually make people less happy, and it's because every choice involves loss in the form of opportunity cost. Sometimes that cost is very small, like when the decision is insignificant or the choices not made are worthless. But in the case of 'what is your passion', making one single choice means saying no to an incredible array of very good options. Obviously nobody is asking you to make that one choice and stick with it forever, but even making it once often involves a lot of opportunity cost. If I had gone to the career fair looking for an internship in, say, the design of automotive brake pads, maybe I would have found it. But it would have shut down countless other opportunities for internships that I would have enjoyed.

The fact that creating a definition or making a choice involves loss applies to a lot of different aspects of life. For example, I was asked in Topics in Leadership class today to come up with a personal purpose statement. Take a second and complete the sentence: 'My purpose in life is _____.' Anything more specific than 'do good things and lead a good life' is inevitably going to be incomplete at best. You can see the problems with this exercise right on the surface - you are limiting through definition your very purpose in life. Does that really sound like a logical or sensible thing to do?

There is a good commercial running right now in which somebody asks a new acquaintance at a tailgate party, 'so what do you do?' The scene flips rapidly through the main character going fishing, playing frisbee with his kid, pounding in nails, climbing a mountain, etc. The guy replies 'Well, I... um, yeah.' Not surprisingly, he finds it impossible to package his life into a neat little boxed up reply.

In many ways this is an application of the Buddhist philosophy that any attempts to define or conceptualize reality ultimately fail. It is impossible to define boundaries around an object or concept and capture the whole picture. A better attempt, although still imperfect, is to use the negative tense. For example, my friend Erik suggested that the best advice you could give regarding passion would be stated 'dont pursue anything you aren't passionate about'. Doesn't have the same ring to it, but doesn't it give off a much more liberating feeling than the positive advice?

I'm going to make a decision here and deliberately not have answers to 'what is your passion' or 'what is your purpose' or anything like that. It feels good to not have to have an answer. But then again, maybe I'm just being picky or stubborn. After all, at some point I'm going to need to just get an internship already.