Passion, Talent and Obligation — Three Independent Questions for Life
Some years ago my former manager asked me this question: “Do you like your tasks at work?”
I answered: “No, I don’t like them.”
“Then what do you like to do?” He asked.
“I want to have more tasks in the other direction(a specific area that I cannot tell here).” I answered.
I didn’t get the tasks in the other direction, although I answered honestly. I kept doing the tasks that I didn’t like, but I was good at.
At the year-end performance review, he tried his best not to give me a promotion by saying: “You don’t like your tasks. I don’t think I can give you a promotion.”
I answered: “I answered you honestly that I indeed did not like the tasks I had. But that doesn’t mean I’m not good at them. My performance proves that and you know I finished them well.”
He kept silent.
Don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice person. But a nice person only means “nice”. I will write an article soon to discuss this topic.
Today, I want to put my focus on these three words: passion, talent, and obligation.
When you have a task in life, these three words found three fundamental yet independent questions:
- Do you like it?
- Are you good at it?
- Must you do it?
My former manager mixed two of them: he thought “I don’t like it” equals to “I’m not good at it”. He is definitely not the only one.
Passion
Ask yourself this: “Do I like my work?” That’s a question about passion.
When you like your work, the work itself brings you joy. When we are joyful, we tend to be more persistent in what we do. It forms a positive environment which in turn makes it easier for you to excel at your work.
Passion doesn’t necessarily guarantee mastery and it has no direct relationship to talents. Some people find a unique path that combines their talent and passion at an early age, some people find it midway, and some people never find it throughout their lives.
With the ignition of passion, talent can perform at its best.
Talent
You can still be good at one area even if you hate it. Talent is what is born with us. As discussed above, if you are talented and passionate in the same area, very good, you feel happy and are good at it. It creates the ultimate maximum performance.
But if you are only talented but not passionate, it doesn’t bother you to have peak performance in this area. Only you feel less happy and probably even sad when you work on it. But again, it has nothing to do with passion.
If it happens that obligations are in the play, even greater. You even avoid the situations where you have to explain to others why you insist on what you do. Obligations are such a time saver, just a simple answer “I have to, it’s my obligation.” is enough.
Obligation
What keeps me continuing with the tasks I didn’t like? Obligations.
We always say we should do whatever we want to do and say whatever we want to say. It sounds exciting and free but it’s also quite irresponsible to apply it everywhere without prerequisites. (I will write my thoughts on the prerequisites in another article.)
We have obligations to keep because we are not alone in this world. We need to care about others’ feelings and benefits, we need to care about the rules that are made, and we need to keep these obligations although sometimes they make us furious. But they are obligations.
If you can’t change the world. Change yourself. And if you can’t change yourself, then change the world.
— The The
When my former manager asked me what I liked to do, I actually wanted to ask him back:
“There are things I really like to do, but does that mean you will support me on all of these?”
Of course, I couldn’t answer that way, too rude.
But he didn’t support anything in the end.
There are obligations that keep me doing what I don’t like to do. Out of my strong sense of responsibility.
Obligations can be a driving force to develop passion. We see often in real life and perhaps it happened to you too, that in the beginning, you hate something but due to obligations you have to do that, then as time goes by, you grow real interest in it and in the end, we can call it passion.
Also, there are some controversial discussions about talent and obligations.
If someone is by nature talented in one area, should he/she develop their paths themselves following their passion and interest, or should they feel a sense of responsibility to their fellow humans and instead develop their paths following their talents? (If their passion/interest doesn’t overlap with their talent.)
Passion, talent, and obligation are three key words to keep in mind in most aspects of life. They can have effects on each other but not necessarily.
They are independent. These three questions derived from them are independent:
- Do you like it?
- Are you good at it?
- Must you do it?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments.
