Young Adulthood & the Passion-Driven Life
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A defining characteristic of my conversations with friends this weekend was their struggle with themselves to find direction in life.
There was the friend who is graduating from college but realized he’s just spent 4 years in the wrong major. There was another who has a true passion, one that doesn’t pay easily, and so is stuck watching time (and youth) go by in his day job. There was the big-time, globe-trotting lawyer who told me that I, despite my own career difficulties, was in an enviable position because I had found my passion and he had not.
Everyone knows, or should know, the “hedgehog theory” of life – that your career should be:
- Something that will pay
- Something that you are good at
- Something that you like
While that is the overarching framework, different people can look at the order of the items differently.
To some, whatever pays most is what they like, and they will work their butts off until they get good at it.
To others, if they really like something, then that is fulfilment in itself; getting good at it, and then getting paid, is just icing. (Being good at something that you don’t like and that doesn’t pay doesn’t really work)
The troubled ones aren’t really good at what they like, or their likes aren’t the kind that pay easily.
The lost ones simply don’t know; they don’t know what they are REALLY good at, or they kinda like a few things but aren’t, like, CRAZY about them.
Young adulthood is about transitioning from being a carefree child, constantly assured of advancement and a brighter tomorrow, to being lost and troubled, hyper-aware that your own actions and decisions will decide your future because no one else really cares if you are happy. It ends when you suddenly find one day that you have become one of the Some or one of the Others.
Some people never grow out of young adulthood – and that is their choice. It does not have to be yours.
This is young adulthood
This is the time when you know you are no longer a child:
- there is no ‘system’ or ‘path’ that you can just coast through, picking the more prestigious/popular/easier whenever you come to a fork in the road;
- when your ‘potential’ for achievements far exceeds your achievements so far, or maybe you desperately want to achieve something, just anything;
- when you feel you can do anything but can’t do everything, but even if you pick one out of ‘anything’ you want it to mean Something.
Living, Sharing, Remembering
Rick Warren has the right message for religious young adults, even if it is Christian-focused: http://www.purposedrivenlife.com/
But more broadly, for the non-religious and the religious alike, I find that a better prescription for meaningful living is the Passion-filled life.
It is the life worth living because you have lived for something; not necessarily for the benefit of others, but from the sheer rush and joy it brings you even when no one else is looking.
It is the life worth sharing because you are inspired and you know that there are kindred souls out there who desperately seek the flame of inspiration you have carried in your life and in your soul.
It will be the life worth remembering because you did what you were passionate about, not because most people of your socioeconomic background did it, not because it was the family tradition or parents’ desire, and not because “stuff just happened”.
Starting a PDL
The Passion-Driven Life is about being your own motive power, setting your own course – but if you are having trouble finding direction, nobody’s stopping you from using theirs. History’s landmarks are the people who have changed their lives and moved others with their passion, and their passions are torches just waiting to be picked up by you to carry on the journey and to light the way.
Seek out these people of passion: the people who live, the people who achieve, the people humanity will remember for all time.
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