"Work is love made visible." - Kahlil Gibran in "The Prophet"

My reflections today were inspired by remarks Ben Horowitz made about following your passion in his commencement address at Columbia this past May. I’m grateful to Peter Sheppard for sharing an article about those remarks on Facebook. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have had the chance to read them. For years I've struggled with something Kahlil Gibran wrote in "The Prophet" and Horowitz’s comments provide a different perspective. Gibran wrote:

"Work is love made visible.

And if you cannot work with love but only with distaste, it is better that you should leave your work and sit at the gate of the temple and take alms of those who work with joy.

For if you bake bread with indifference, you bake a bitter bread that feeds but half man's hunger.

And if you grudge the crushing of the grapes, your grudge distills a poison in the wine.

And if you sing though as angels, and love not the singing, you muffle man's ears to the voices of the day and the voices of the night."

I enjoy Gibran's work a great deal. He and Emerson are the only people I have quoted more than once so far as I begin these reflections each week.  Still, I have felt that my work has seldom passed his test. While I do not work "only with distaste", there is much in my work that I find distasteful. I first read “The Prophet” many years ago when I was in high school, and it resonated with my idealistic dreams about what my life could be. I hoped I would be able to find a career what would allow me to work with joy. Instead, I have found good work that allows me to make a difference but that seldom brings me joy and has little to do with my passions.

I have found my work distasteful much of the time these past 35 years. Managing the people who deliver and support IT services, working to understand the needs and experiences of those who use the services we provide, seeking to meet their expectations, and striving to foster a common understanding between these two groups has often been frustrating and discouraging. My frustration is eased by the respect I feel for the people who I work with and for the work they do. I believe that many of them have a greater passion for their work than I do. Ironically, I often feel more discouraged because I can’t meet their passion with my own.

This work is not at all where my passion lies and it is very difficult for me to do it with joy.  If I were to list those things I could work with joy to achieve, the list would include simple civilized things like cooking, gardening and making useful and beautiful objects from wood and iron. On the list would be sweet wild things like hiking in the mountains, swimming in tropical seas and Canadian lakes, and standing still in the silent places to feel their beauty. I’d wish to share that beauty and peace with the world. My greatest passion and joy has more to do with being than achieving. Living a life in love and connection with the wonder that fills and surrounds us all.

The list would include creative pursuits like writing and performing music and songs, drawing and painting to fill images with truth and emotion, using words to tell stories and write poems that evoke thoughts and feelings. It would include opportunities to make a difference by giving my time to help people. To open a world of ideas by helping them learn to read, to help make our world a more just and equal place for them, to help them have safe places to live and opportunities to experience their own joy and passion; especially in music and wilderness.

In his address to the graduates at Columbia, Ben Horowitz urged them not to follow their passions and he provided four good reasons for them not to. Instead, he told them “my recommendation would be follow your contribution. Find the thing that you’re great at, put that into the world, contribute to others, help the world be better and that is the thing to follow.” With apologies to Kahlil Gibran, I think Horowitz is on to something here. I still think that finding and honoring your passions is important to living a full, rich, and joyful life. At the same time, it can be very satisfying to contribute by doing something you are good at, even it that doesn't involve working in your passion.

Horowitz points to another possible measure of making love visible and one that I find attractive. His advice admits the possibility that we can find great joy in being of service to the world even when the work we do does not always allow us to work in our passion. I do believe that my work can be love made visible. I have made my own peace with the work I do on the basis that it allows me to make tangible my love for my family by providing us a living and more. While the work itself is not associated with the things I love, the living it provides allows my loved ones, and me, some opportunity to pursue our passions. Often, those passions lead us to where we can each make a difference.

Perhaps we can bake good bread, make good wine, and sing our best truth as sweetly as we can, and it will be joy enough to see these nourish our fellow travelers on this earth even if we do not burn with passion for this work. Maybe it will even be enough, for now, to be an administrator working with issues that are often distasteful if my work helps students prepare for their own giving to the world. While I've seldom worked in my passion, working to provide a living, and more, for those I love comes pretty close. Looking at whether my work makes a positive difference for others might even lead me to be pretty happy and satisfied.

Retirement will be a new adventure and offer me the chance to face these choices all over again. I wonder what I will choose?

If you’d like to read the article that inspired these reflections, it is online at:

https://www.themuse.com/advice/4-reasons-following-your-passion-is-overrated-plus-what-you-should-really-follow-to-be-happy

To listen to Ben Horowitz’s speech at Columbia, and for a trascript, please see:

http://a16z.com/2015/05/28/some-career-advice-for-all-you-recent-graduates/