The key to a successful and fulfilling life? Find your passion, and work as hard as humanly possible at it, says grandson
I think it’s important for young people to just try shit. It’s easy to feel like you want to have a clear sense of what you want to do with your life before you invest all your time and energy into it, but I don’t think you need to have much of a plan beyond an idea of what you care about.
That is especially important for people in high school or university. I think finding out what you really don’t mind doing is even more important than getting good grades. Because it’s gonna come with some bullshit, no matter what it is! And people don’t like to tell that side of the story, but there’s all sorts of things to do with your dream job that somebody is exhausted by. So I think it’s really important to just find out what it is that you give a shit about and then from there, just dive in. At the onset of grandson, I had no idea what it would sound like, or what people would engage with. But sometimes you’ve just gotta jump off a cliff and build your wings on the way down.
The advice that I give people is: the more you throw hours into something and continue to work at it, the shorter that gap becomes. And that can be very cumbersome, it can be exhausting and discouraging, but you have to trust that everyone that came before you had put in those hours. So I try to tell people to just keep throwing shit at the wall, and trying your best to make it honest, and keep it grounded in what you were first inspired by.
That advice applies to most things in life. I could dedicate my life to becoming a professional footballer, but that ship might have sailed, or it might be beyond my physical capacities. But as far as making a difference, making something creative, or telling your story, there is just a sheer amount of effort.
I think there are people that for whatever reason don’t try to find their passion or don’t have a clear sense of what fulfils them. They don’t sign up for that class, don’t take that internship and don’t do the thing that scares them. And, as a result, more people look for ulterior ways to feel important, validated and fulfilled. We have built billion-dollar industries around filling that void for people. And a lot of consumerism and capitalism is built on that desire to fill up this ‘enough-ness’. So you find yourself trying to gravitate towards status symbols, and buying shiny shit, as if that will somehow answer any questions anyone might have about you. Like, ‘Oh, don’t worry! She’s got it together because she’s driving a particular car…’ When, really, the people I’ve met that I most admire, or whose lives I most want to mirror, the sort of fulfilment and meaningfulness that they derive from their life is intrinsic, and has very little to do with externalities. They really don’t give a shit about what people think, and the only way to get there is to find peace with who you are and what you’re working towards.
