Shut up, Confucius!

Confucius said- “Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life.” Three months into my first job - for which I had studied for 5 years eagerly waiting for the day when I will finally do what I love doing - I understood that Confucius was wrong.

What I realized was – if you make what you love doing, a ‘job’ - you will start hating it! Let me explain. So. I love writing. Let’s see what are the career options for a writer – journalism, copy writing, novel / book writing, script writing (TV / movie / theatre). . . I write when I feel like, when words come to me, overwhelm me, touch me and I feel compelled to put my pen to paper. It comes from my heart. Cut to scene – I have a deadline. Client has feedback. Others think they know better than me about the subject (they may!). I don’t care about what I am asked to write. I need to keep changing what I have written to get it ‘approved’. I cannot be attached to what I have written. I may have spent days and nights, redbulls and espressos on something, and then it never sees the light of the day. All this is professional, nothing personal against anyone, really! Most of the times the first draft which you felt a connection with, is completely mutated in the final version when it is finally approved. It doesn’t feel like it was yours. It becomes the Ship of Theseus.

Thank god, I did not take up writing as a career. Now the position where I am in, I can happily say that I absolutely love what I do. I don’t mind working over some weekends (unless I have plans!) because it is so interesting that I want to do it. But it is a job after all. When you absolutely love something, you are so attached to it, it is very difficult to keep a distant stance and view it pragmatically. My love could be my life but my job is not my life. I am working so that I can live the life that I would love to.

It becomes especially difficult when you love your job, the work that you do, but the people you work with are not as excited or passionate about it. In the short span of my work life, I have realized that I should not be attached to my work. So what if I have spent days and nights working on an idea, creating hundreds of slides, wringing my brain, forgetting to eat (you know it is a big deal for me!). Just because so much time, effort and energy is spent on something does not mean it will be accepted by everyone and you will get applauded (there will be those days too). You should be ready to start from scratch if required. That is how good ideas germinate. There is a thin line between attachment and detachment which I think I have come to learn. I get bogged down, yes. But there is only one way after that – getting up.

I don’t think I could use my attachment – detachment funda with something I truly love. That is why I don’t think I could be a ‘professional’ writer (though writing is a big part of what I do, it is not exactly what I do – it is a golden mean which I thoroughly enjoy).

P.S: A dialogue poster from one of my favourite movies :) Annie Hall.