Original Title: Stop Doing What You Love. It's Killing You.
Original Post Date: November 29, 2018
At 22, I believed that
Doing what you love is dangerous because you will do everything and stop at nothing. You will know no bounds in your pursuit of perfection, as, in your love of your job, you will stop at nothing to see your passion succeed.
Still reeling from my time in Spain, full of zeal for the euro-centric life I lived, I was clinging to the belief that American's worked too hard and too long. That we needed to find a better work-life balance: that we needed to avoid the cliché "Do What You Love and You Will Never Work A Day in Your Life".
At 27, I will tell you:
Work life balance is a myth, and if you are trying to find it, you are wasting your time, effort, and potential.
What changed?
I came to understand that this balance is impossible.
We believe work life balance is harmony. We believe that the work we do and the lives we lead should be in a consistent, orderly, and pleasing arrangement.
That simply will not happen.
In her book Big Magic, Elizabeth Gilbert illustrates how the creative energy of the world works.
She explains that she was struck to write a novel about Brazil: specifically the Amazon Rain Forest. Latched onto this idea, she rearranged her life around the pursuit of this idea. Creating a main character, Evelyn, a spinster from Minnesota, Elizabeth's novel centered around Evelyn falling in love and going to Brazil to investigate a missing man and a large sum of money. She titled it: Evelyn of the Amazon.
As she continued her work, life interrupted the flow of Liz's ideas. With her soon to be husband detained at the border, Liz was forced to shelve Evelyn with the hope to return when life settled down. Yet, now married, with a separate book complete, when Elizabeth returned to the work, all the magic she was once struck with was gone.
She was "looking at nothing but the empty husk of what had once been a warm pulsating entity" (Big Magic 47).
So she was sufficiently shocked when she talked to her friend, author, Ann Patchett, and Ann explained how she was 100 pages into writing a new book: a book that focused on a middle-aged spinster from Minnesota who falls in love and ends up involved in business scheme that sees a man and a large sum of money go missing in the Amazon.
In essence, this is this anecdote is the personification what Gilbert calls Big Magic.
This magic comes in and out of each of our lives. We have no control of it. It does not care where we are. It knocks and we have to be willing to open that door in an instant. We have to corral the energy before it knocks on someone else's door.
Plain and simple, the idea will come to fruition be it through you or I.
This is why work life balance is a farce.
This energy is inconsistent: it cannot be predicted. Erratic, this magic destroys any possibility of balance: when it knocks you must answer.
You cannot temper this energy.
You cannot siphon off the amount of magic you want to receive at one given moment, hoping that when you are in a better state, you can give it your full attention. Like manna in the desert, if you hold onto it for too long, it will go bad.
The energy does not care if your fiancé is detained at the American border. The energy does not care if you have other project to work on. The energy will provide you an opportunity, and it is your choice whether you take it or not.
This is why you have to do something you love.
Because at some moment, Big Magic is going to come knocking when you do not want to answer.
After what has been the longest day of your life, you are going to have settled into bed, after your nightly routine, your eyes closing as your head hits the pillow, and boom, big idea.
If you do not love what you do, if you are searching for the perfect work life balance, nothing is going to carry you from your bed, to your desk to scribble something down. Nothing is going to get you back out of bed 5-6 more times because you have not fully given the moment the attention it deserves.
When you are sitting at dinner with friends, a new lesson plan, a small tweak to a project, or an exciting essay prompt, will pop into your brain, and unless you write it down in that instant, when you come home ready to unpack what seemed to be the only thing you could think about, it will be gone.
See work life balance does not come in your ability to hold in suspension your efforts and your rest. Work life balance comes in the ebbs and flows of the energy and ideas you experience.
Even the hardest workers find time to relax: to meditate, work out, call friends, or read a book. However, if they were to find an equal balance between their efforts and their work, they would not produce anything. Yes, there are two parts to the equation, but, no, they are never in full balance.
You will face bouts of intense, often violent, moments where the tide comes in and swallows the entire shore, only to relent and recede once you have sufficiently been immersed in the what the water has to offer you.
Extraordinary things can only be achieved through extraordinary efforts - Matt Higgins
Extraordinary outcomes only happen when we are willing to take a deep breath, plug our nose, and squeeze our abdomen so hard we nearly pee ourselves. We must hold on as long as we can, hoping that we have gleaned all that is offered while submerged in this force: until the moment our cheeks puff out and our chest begins to expand.
Do not focus on figuring out when to cap your efforts in the name of balance.
Elizabeth flew to the border to explain her fiancé was coming to America so they could be married, and she lost her would be story.
The stark reality is, no matter your job, you will be required to put in some level of effort beyond what you want. Whoever it is you look to as your job idol, they are allowing the tide to thrash them left, right, up and down, knowing that the waters will recess.
This is inevitable.
Yes, you can try to watch from the shore, running to the hills when you see the tide coming in, but the water will reach you and it is better to not fight. The fight will only lead you to live a life full of resentment as those who allow the waves to crash down on them reap the rewards of the inspirations they encounter.
I was so wrong, so full of angst.
You do have to pursue something you love. You are going to have to work. You are going to have to expend yourself for moments where you believe you want to rest: you might as well enjoy what it is you are doing when this happens.
I see it one of two ways.
1. You can choose to drown as the water washes over you, trying to fight the water, or shoot the hurricane.
or
2. You can choose to swim, swim as long as you can, knowing that the water ebbs and flows, and at some point you will find the rest you need.
In either case, there is no balance.
There is only work: a work you hate, and try to fight, or a work you love. A work you embrace in the moments of hardship and struggle the same as the joys and the triumphs. Work life balance is a myth, and if you are trying to find it, you are wasting your time, effort, and potential.
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