Somewhere along the line in culture, it became all about self-expression over self-mastery. I suppose we can blame the post-1960’s counter-cultural revolution for this. Thanks hippies.
Now, some hipsters are on to this! Even Neil Gaiman offered a mantra of “do good art” at a commencement speech a few years ago, in place of some glib remark of doing the art you love.
Yes, we have bamboozled to believe we can do anything we want, and that just isn’t the case. I think Mike Rowe speaks well to this in this Prager U video:
It should be obvious at a young age, most people don’t have a clue what their passion is and what it can become. One of the best books I’ve read on the topic is Cal Newport’s So Good That They Can’t Ignore You.
Cal makes the great point that “passion is an epiphenomenon of a working life well lived. Don't follow your passion; rather, let it follow you in your quest to become so good that they can't ignore you.” So in other words, passion is not a bad thing. It’s how we use it.
Now we all know people that may be good at their job, but damn unhappy with it. Well, it may be that “mastery by itself is not enough to guarantee happiness,” but that career satisfaction “moves beyond the mere acquisition of useful skills and into the subtle art of investing the career capital this generates into the right types of traits in your working life.”
What are these traits? According to Cal, they are creativity, impact, and control. Sounds foundational to me.
Sometimes we can’t connect the dots until we’ve embodied the dots. And so like any healthy character disposition for delayed gratification, passion for craft is to be cultivated in time. And during that time, you may begin to see things in ways you never once envisioned.