Finding Your Passions
Thursday, August 18th, 2005Dear [Emmy],
Well, I’d say the trick in life whether young or old, is to devote considerable time to finding your passions. Knowing your passions wil indeed help you to really know what you want to do.
But the effort to find your passions is not always easy and can take a very long time. Sometimes, people discover passions when very young. Some never quite discover them and then, spend their lives drifting from place to place without ever accomplishing anything [truly] meaningful and positive [to their spirit]. You might have to wait for years before nature reveals your passions to you.
In the meantime, an exercise you could try that might help to find your passions is: Try things that you’re not sure you’ll like. Indeed, one way to discover your deepest, truest longings, is to do what you are uncertain of or even know that you don’t want to do for a while. This teaches you about yourself, and very often uncovers your real destiny. One can learn much from a bad job. The daily grind can indeed light the way for you, while finding your passions.
Also, consider finding your passions in your dreams. Indeed, dreams can provided clues as to what your true desires are too. Be sure to listen to them, because humans dream about their deepest yearnings. If you don’t dream about a particular pursuit, then you probably don’t want it enough to work long and hard enough to achieve that dream.
Be open to new experiences and don’t too quickly reject growth opportunities that befall you. At your age, any experience will teach you useful lessons, which later will light the path to your true destiny. New experiences are the landscape upon which the search for your passions is executed.
Since you have lots of time right now to spend finding your passions, take the opportunity to consider and experience many ideas. Read as many books as you can, about everything; romance, religion, philosophy, fiction, non fiction, science fiction, diaries … everything! Maybe you could locate books written by other blind people in your position – fresh out of high school, trying to figure out what to pursue. Watch lots of movies, and listen, listen, and listen some more.
My biggest regret today is that I didn’t read more in my teens and twenties. But then, I never needed to devote much energy to finding my passions, because there was always something I wanted to do deeply. But if I hadn’t known my dreams, I probably would have read much more. Books just have so many answers. They’ve helped me through depression in my early thirties and so, they may help you cope better with your vision loss, even if their title says nothing about vision. You just never know where you’ll find a tidbit of life-changing, passion-revealing information. So be open to finding your passions in books and elsewhere. Be always on the lookout for clues to what you really want. Hunt for them, real hard. Talk to anyone you can about them. And you’ll probably find your passions.
I was lucky because I always had intense interests. In elementary and high school, it was electronics. I dreamt of repairing TVs and maintaining radio and TV transmitters. Then, when computers got big in the early eighties, I started wanting to program them and make them do all sorts of neat tasks. Then, when I hit my 40s, I realized that the one thing I dreamt of most (having my dream girl in my life) was the most important desire, and now I’m working on that, and using writing to help discover how to make that dream come true. The point is that you may end up doing many things before you learnwhat’s really the most important to you. I know it’s hard, but be patient, and don’t rush.
To answer your question, I knew I wanted to pursue electronics sometime in high school. I don’t remember exactly when the certainty of it hit me. But that’s me. You could be different. You may find your passions in your thirties or forties. For some, this process can take decades.
Actually, I didn’t always have a passion to write. Back in college, I hated putting my thoughts down on paper. Occasionally I’d tell my writing teachers this, and, astonished, they’d want to know, if I didn’t like it, how I was able to write so well. A couple of them said they would have liked me to take more writing classes and less computer training. But, I wasn’t at writing then. In fact, I never even considered doing it professionally until 2001.
Sometimes our true desires hit us all at once, in a big flash of insight. But with me and writing however, it took many years to become convinced I really wanted to write. Even today I struggle at times to generate the motivation to produce a thousand words a day. But it’s getting easier the more I practice it, and read more about it. Writing works well for a vision-impaired person because you can write at your own pace. If you’re writing philosophy, motivational, or other styles that don’t require travel, you can jot ideas down at home. Being unable to drive isn’t as much the hindrance it was with electronics and computers. Finding your passions may mean finding something you like that you can enjoy, even though you’re vision-impaired.
Yet I’m glad I did electronics and computers, because they taught me what I could and could not do well as a vision-impaired individual. You see now why I suggest that you get lots of different experiences to find your passions. My experiences, though many of them were bad, all helped me reach the understanding that writing is what I most want to do.
Yes, another way to know that you’re pursuing a deep and legitimate passion, is that others won’t be able to talk you out of it. If they can instill doubt that lasts more than a day or two, then you may not want to make this dream come true as much as you think.
But when you’re really sure that you do, you’ll tell them (nicely) that though they may be right about this thing being too difficult, or expensive, or wrong for you, you need to try it anyway. I got all kinds of grief when I quit my job to begin writing full-time. People thought I’d lost my head giving up such a high-paying position. But money doesn’t mean much when we’re unhappy, and that realization made the decision to leave easy.
No matter what your dream, you’ll encounter the naysayer often. However, if you’re doing what you really need to be doing, their negativity won’t bother you much. If they keep harping at you after you’ve made your decision clear, then just don’t talk to them again until they agree to support you instead of shooting holes in your dreams. People can’t discourage you from pursuing a passion that you know is true.
Good luck at finding your passions, and will talk to you tonight.