“Our Passion Chooses Us”: Three Questions to Stop the Chase

For the past four years I’ve been on a passion-quest, of sorts. They used to call it a mid-life crisis. And in that crisis you typically bought a convertible Porsche and picked up a girlfriend half your age. Both are very exciting and very expensive. Seems like a lot of trouble to me. 

My passion-quest has been more of an Admiral Stockdale moment.  Remember him? He was billionaire Ross Perot’s running mate in the 1992 Presidential election. Admiral Stockdale went on national television in a debate and humorously asked the American people, “Who am I?” “Why am I here?” The mainstream press and Saturday Night Live crucified him. The campaign never recovered.

Like most people I’m searching for that one, true passion. That one thing that will keep me up late at night and will get me out of bed before my iPhone starts ringing and vibrating at 6am.

In middle age it’s like our souls thirst for quenching. And our minds waste innumerable hours on a quest to find that one true thing that will quench our thirst. The thirst for meaning and purpose.

This self-induced passion quest led me to a six minute documentary called Jim Carrey: I Needed Color. Click here and watch it now. Now I know you’re thinking about Jim Carrey-the actor. And that’s the right guy. But this six minute documentary is another side of Jim that you’ve never seen: Jim Carrey-the reclusive artist.

My Dad would say, Jim is “high on grass” for most of the six minutes. Maybe. But he shares some timeless wisdom. 

“What you do in life chooses you. You can choose not to do it. You can choose to do something safer. Your vocation chooses you.”  

I don’t know if it’s the familiar Jim Carey voice or the ominous music, but this documentary moved me. “Your vocation chooses you”. Really? When I got out of college I just needed a paycheck. I had about $723 in my checking account. I was pretty close to selling my plasma to make ends meet. When the first job opportunity came along I jumped at it. And it’s been a 25 year vocation. Maybe it chose me cause it knew I was running out of chicken flavored, Ramen noodles. It certainly wasn’t my lifelong passion that pushed me into my career.  

“When I grow up I want to be an HR consultant”.  

–Nobody, Ever 

That’s likely the difference between an artist like Jim Carrey and the rest of us out here in Realville. We’re doing stuff we’ve learned to like. But we aren’t doing stuff that we love. And that’s why we find ourselves longing for more. More passion. More inspiration. More purpose.

No man wants to work, work, work, only to die quietly of a heart attack in the suburbs.

We are searching for something that inspires us-from the inside out. But, I think what Carrey is trying to say is that our passion chooses us. 

This six minute documentary follows Jim Carrey around his personal art studio in Manhattan as he paints and talks to the camera. Click here for another chance to watch it. What’s fascinating about this video is his complete vulnerability.

Jim’s passion found him at a young age. He would lock himself in his room for hours to sketch and write poetry. Yet he buried that passion deep inside and chose to go another route-a different form of art.

I think it’s like that for all of us. We all had a passion at some point. We tinkered with it until something caused us to doubt our own talent and ability. Someone incorrectly told us that we weren’t really good at it. Or someone we respect ridiculed us for daring greatly. Or our internal fear of failure mechanism kicked in. For most of us the fear of failure is far greater than the actual failure itself.

Bang bang-death of our passion. 

“The painting was telling me what I needed to know about myself”

I got pulled out of class in the first grade by a teacher I didn’t know. She walked me towards the Principal\’s office. I think I peed myself just a little. Instead we turned into another classroom. There were other students. I figured this was the “island for misfit kids”. Turns out my regular teacher recommended me to write for the school’s creative writing magazine: The W.T. Jackson Journal. I recently came across my first story- in my filing cabinet:

“The long red fox jumped over the old brown log.”

Yup. That’s it. Ten words. Young Tom had the gift of gab, huh?  Like you, I’ve spent most of my life searching for something to be passionate about. As if passion is aspirational. Meaning that there is a passion out there just waiting for everyone–if we could only identify what it is.

In our family we call it the “closet of broken dreams”. The one closet in our house where dreams go to die: the guitar, Fly Rod, surfboard, painting easel, bongo drums, Pottery wheel, squash racket, etc. You get the point

We spend our lives looking for that one true thing. That one (yet unknown) thing that will define our life and finally give us purpose. Instead of looking inside ourselves, we instinctively start thinking really, really big thoughts: 

Maybe I should run the Kona Ironman. 

…move to East Africa to establish clean water sources for remote villages. 

……….go to Medical School in Guam. 

Like if you try enough crazy, new stuff, the answer will become clear, hopefully before you run out of money.

The ironic thing is that every one of us has a passion inside of us. Something that can captivate our mind and spirit. Things that cause us to totally lose track of time, forget to eat, forget to use the bathroom and go into some super catatonic, Star Trek mind meld.

Think about the scene in Breaking Bad. The one where Walter White and Jessie Pinkman cook up their first batch of blue crystal meth in Uncle Eddie’s sweet “Recreational Vehicle”. Mr. White is hyper focused. He’s totally in the zone. Click below to watch the scene.

You aren’t Walter White. And you likely can’t (and shouldn’t) cook meth. But I’m willing to bet you have a passion. And when that passion is “locked & loaded” it causes you to lose all track of time and space. Like Jim Carrey painstakingly molding a clay figurine in the dark at 5am. 

And for most of us that passion is right in front of us. It’s totally obvious to everyone… but us. It’s the equivalent of having spinach in your teeth. Everyone sees it but you. It’s nearly impossible to find and remove the spinach without a mirror. That’s the way it is with passion.

How you hear it will tell you all you need to know about where you are in life. Our passion makes us wildly vulnerable. So our minds bury the awareness. It’s a protection mechanism. Fortunately with age we tend to respect vulnerability as a path to growth. That’s why things get clearer as we age.

“I think everybody should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that it\’s not the answer.”

-Jim Carrey

The real question is this. Once you identify your passion, what are you willing to give up for it? Maybe you are destined to dig holes in the ground in Eastern Africa. Good for you. But what are you willing to give up? Can you live in a yurt in Africa with the bugs and the snakes? Living on Peter Pan Chunky peanut-butter and Kaopectate cocktails? Yeah, me either.

But, hey, that’s progress. Once you find something that drives you, it doesn’t mean you should quit your day job and live in a yurt. That’s where the Tik-Tok generation gets in trouble. They confuse these things.

Your day job is likely the engine that funds your passion. So use your Paid Time Off to go on mission trips to save the world. Spend your nights and weekends creating ways to raise money for your trips to Eastern Africa. Create a non-profit to raise money and find other “do-gooders” who like chunky Peter Pan.

So my advice is to find the mirror. Find a way to peel back all the layers. The things that society tells us. The negative, “sure you like selling vintage baseball cards on eBay but can’t you find something better to do with your life?” And what would my friends (insert: mom, dad, professor, pastor, crazy Aunt Sally, etc.) think of me if I spent more time in Eastern Africa?  

See there are two forces that are constantly in motion. Both are uniquely empowered to keep you from pursuing your life’s passion.

The first force is your brain. Like spinach in your teeth it often won’t process what it does not see-or want to see. Inspiration and insight can only arrive when the mind is quiet and free of static.

Otherwise your mind will feel like you’re trapped in a corn maze with a whiny four year old who needs a nap

The second force is the rest of the world. It sees the proverbial piece of spinach. But it chooses not to tell you about it.  

“I don’t know what painting teaches me. I know that it just frees me. Free from the future, free from the past, free from regret, free from worry.”

Look, the entire world is wired for conformity. If you don’t believe me just visit Tokyo, Japan.  Every businessman dresses exactly the same: black suit, white shirt, blue necktie and a pair of sensible black shoes.  The business district is a creepy mass of cloned humanity. Like George Fox and the perennial suit of leather-mentioned, of course, in Sir Thomas Carlyle’s masterpiece, Sartor Resartus.  

But you don’t live in Tokyo, thank God. You live in total freedom to pursue whatever the heck you want. As long as you’re vulnerable enough to accept the judgment of the nay-sayers.

Sure Jim Carrey is rich and famous. But he’s an artist……and he’s human, too. And I’m betting that this haughty article by The Guardian left a mark on the boy: ”Jim Carrey’s art is yet more proof that Hollywood stars should avoid the canvas.  

“….but the most embarrassing and talentless of all the celebrities who try their hand at art tend to be Hollywood actors.”

The article pans his work because he is not a “proper artist”. Hogwash. Let the man paint his pictures.

Vilayat Inayat Khan (19 June 1916  – 17 June 2004) was a teacher of meditation and of the traditions of the East IndianChishti Order of Sufism. I have no idea what Sufism is. But he did say and teach some cool things:

“The human spirit lives on creativity and dies in conformity and routine.”

We are all conditioned to accept conformity, eschew risk, please our friends and family and pursue lives of complete and utter morbid predictability. We are not conditioned to take risks, accept full and total vulnerability and follow our passions. And that might be the reason why so many people are so darn unhappy. 

“Your time is limited, so don\’t waste it living someone else\’s life. Don\’t be trapped by dogma—which is living with the results of other people\’s thinking. Don\’t let the noise of others\’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition.”

–Steve Jobs 

My advice is to find a mirror-and look for that piece of spinach. Then look deep into it and ask yourself three really hard questions. 

1. What is it that I enjoy that can cause me to lose all track of time and space?

2. Other than specific human beings, what do I truly love-or love to do?

3. If I could spend my time doing anything I wanted, without the need for money or the desire to please the entire free world, what would that be?

If you can spend a few weeks being quiet I am willing to bet that you will see your passion right in front of your eyes. Now go and pursue it. 

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