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On passion, aspirations, and the paper chase

So.. yesterday I had a conversation that goes somewhat like this

"what's the difference between passion and hobby?"
"They're damn different. Hobby is something you do for fun and passion is something you cannot live without"

That set me thinking (on a personal level). I never realised that passion and hobbies need not necessarily be aligned.


My hobbies are
swimming
DotA
reading
dancing
working out

While my passion is in
teaching
learning
helping
interacting


I guess there's a bit of overlap. My hobby of reading is driven by my desire to learn and acquire more knowledge. My mid year resolution of reading a book every month simply compels the undisciplined me to read more!

and then there's DotA.. I should really stop playing it's sucking the life out of me.
(on a 7 game losing streak now kthnxbye)

To find out what your hobbies are, examine what takes up your time. 
To know what your passions are, examine what makes up your soul.

What are you willing to spend 6 h a day doing? What are you willing to hurt and go the extra mile for? What are you willing to put in effort and money and at the end of the day, not get any extrinsic reward in return?
That's your passion. (And if it involves drama series or facebook, you may wanna re-evaluate your life.)


I find that a lot of people these days have lost touch with themselves. If I were to ask a bunch of kindergardeners what their passion is (after explaining to them what passion is), they may tell me "my passion is in eating cookies!"  or "my passion is in playing playground!". At least that's something..

With adults, the answer I get sounds more like "idk" or "there are so many choices". Just name me one man. I just wanna know what excites your heart and what makes you feel alive.


And then there are aspirations.

Aspirations are what you wanna be.

Growing up watch channel 8 shows, I aspired to be an actress- I can be whatever I want (doctor, engineer, teacher, witch etc) on the tv and if I really like the job portrayed on the big screen, I'd go pursue a career in that field. It really appealed to the fickle me back then. I lost this dream alr la, cause reality hits and I know I'm gonna be a clown if I ever appear on tv. (maybe I should just go for auditions for fun anyway)

These days, when you ask people what they wanna be, it's always money oriented. 70% of JC kids would tell you that they wanna be a Lawyer, Doctor or Accountant (IMO accountancy is an over saturated field btw, when I hear that students wanna study to be accounting, I'd always try to talk them out of it),

I think it's cause they got slapped in their faces when they told their parents they wanna drive an MRT when they're young. And then mom will say "only people who never study drive MRT! you should study and be a lawyer instead".

I wanna send a note to future Chmel here: when you have kids, you should never do that. I want to embrace my baby's dream, even if it's to become a monkey trainer or an underwater carpenter.

It's quite sad how these dreams of dancing, being a nurse, being a professional runner gets smashed by society in the form of expectations. All these just cause it doesn't bring home the bread.

What I strong feel is that if you do what you love and you're good at it, eventually you'll be successful. Maybe not in society's POV, with the 5 C and what nots, but you'll be successful in your own terms and be able to feel joy while working.


Align your hobbies with your passion, 
and you'll get better at what you love
Align your aspirations with your passion, 
and you'll be able to build a career around the thing you love.


The only need for education in this model of life is to gather more knowledge. That said, knowledge is freely available in our modern world of technology. There really isn't a point in getting a degree besides for bragging rights and to please your parents.

Ok ok, it does serve as hurdle you need to pass if you wanna go for like.. financial, businessish job but come on, are you really gonna tell me that your passion lies in paper work? If not, why are you taking up this 9-5 in the first place!?

That's another thing la. Nowadays everyone is valued according to the worth of their degree instead of the worth of their soul. I think it's disgusting esp when people from NUS/SMU tell people from SIM that "they gave up on their future when they chose SIM".

Fuck you dude I wanna give you a tight slap on your face. It's true that when given a choice between the top 3 uni and the private unis, everyone would choose the former. But it doesn't mean that you're condemned once you enter a private uni. wtf. how pompous of someone to even have that thought in his mind. and how insensitive of him to say it out loud in front of his friend.

Ok I'm getting very angry I need to play some dota. end rant, end abrupt post x

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