“Follow your passion.” I guess it’s the trickiest phrase according to scholars today. Being the 90s kid, I assume most of you are, you might have heard the phrase close to everyday in your high school. It was during the years of our school years that the phrase really flourished. We didn’t even realize that we were the lab rats on whom it was tested upon. But our elder Gen Y’s or #Early90’sKids have not been really successful following their interpretation for it. We have been dishonored by the New York Post who called us the “worst generation.” There have been critiques on our generation some saying that we were overwhelmingly pampered and a very high maintenance generation.
A third of Generation Y’s aged 25-34 still live with their parents which just strengthens their argument. We have become more self-absorbed than our previous generations. Checking Facebook has been in our daily schedule instead of it being a pastime. While society stresses on the passion phrase, scholars give a different view based on their research evidence. They argue that the interpretation of the phrase “follow your passion” is the core cause of the problem our generation faces. If you look at famous personalities like Steve Jobs or Mark Zuckerberg didn’t really follow their passions. They just stumbled upon something, developed a skill and then became passionate about it and further followed their passion. Scholars like Cal Newport and Mike Rowe really want to help our generation by providing sensible advice of “not following your passion blindly.” The passion phrase since childhood forces you to find your passion.
But most of us decide on something we are good in to be our passion and start majoring in -let us say- in anthropology. Imagine there are millions of people who graduate every year and thousands of them pursue a degree in anthropology in order to enjoy the fruits of following their passion. Do they ever think about how many jobs are available in the real world with a major in anthropology and how many graduates with same major are looking for those jobs? The proportion is obvious for that assumed major. According to Mike Rowe, we should look out for opportunities instead of passion. Passion will be developed along the way once you are skilled. Students entering college should think about the job market five-six years from their first day in college to look out for opportunities that they would think would be most successful by the time they graduate.
You shouldn’t forget Steve Jobs wasn’t a computer guy or a tech savvy guy until apple became popular in the market. Zuckerberg’s passion was never to design a social website; he just happened to do it and be good at it. So good that the people made it popular which made him successful. I didn’t really have a passion. I selected engineering because that could help me get a decent paying job. In my high school back in India, I was involved in theatre with a lot of lead roles in most plays. I really believed that acting was my passion and something I would like to take up as a career. My mother gave me a very useful advice then. She said, “It’s good you are passionate about something. But do you really feel you would have a successful life? There are about 2 billion people in India and half a million want to be movie stars. Then what are your odds of being successful,” she said?
That was really an eye opener for me. She is a Bharatanatyam dance teacher herself so she knows about the conditions of performing arts so I know I could trust her. When you have so much competition in a specific field, I guess you would forget your passion along the struggle to reach the desired goal by following your passion. Who could explain the truth of “follow your passion” better than Robert Frost when says the following lines in his poem, “The Road Not Taken” “Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way I doubted if I should ever come back. I shall be telling this with a sigh somewhere ages and ages hence: Two roads diverged in a wood and I Took the one less travelled and that has made all the difference.”
