Monday, November 9, 2015

You already enjoy many things

Image may seem vaguely unrelated, but I took this photo yesterday thinking about the guy who left his tea on this wooden stool, right in the middle of the street. You have to give him credit for coming and going as he pleases, trusting his tea canister and seat to all of the folks passing this busy corner by.
A friend who always sends me the very best things to think about emailed me this article by Mark Manson a couple of weeks ago: 'Screw Finding Your Passion'. Reading it was 7 minutes well spent and a refreshing antidote to the swarm of seminars, pinterest quotes and self-published non-writers out there, all urging us to run into the woods and determine what our true passion is.

To borrow the subject line of my friend's email - go read it. Then this is pretty much verbatim what I wrote back -

Since I left Goog I feel like a lot of people try and find some kind of narrative about what I'm doing; that I'm following my passion, that I'm a frustrated designer who finally liberated myself from the corporate world - but that's not the case. I just talked so long about how much I didn't want to play football anymore, I decided to start collecting bugs because it was different and intriguing to me; I don't know how long I'll be doing this for or how long, or whether it will turn into something else.  When people say 'you're so lucky that you know what you want to do' I think 'yes I am lucky... but you probably already know too; you're just too tied up with financial / job / [insert something] security. There isn't anything else stopping you.'

"You already enjoy many things. You're just choosing to ignore them."

3 comments :

Carmen Varner said...

Is that tea? I'm having a hard time seeing it. Haha. I get what you're saying though. We need to focus on that which makes us happy, like truly focus & open our eyes to see it. :]

// ▲ itsCarmen.com ▲

Stefanie said...

Best of luck to you on your journey. Congrats on going for it.

Lorna Diwa said...

@Carmen - it is! Heavily herbal tea, with a metal straw (a Paraguayan treat) - glad the article and words resonated with you too! @Stefanie - thank you! That means so much :)

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