Do It Anyways

Never Give Up on the Very Thing that Fills Your Veins with Fire and Makes You Feel Alive

Henry David Thoreau famously said that most men live lives of quiet desperation. Most men don’t think of themselves this way, but don’t take their word for it. Most men spend their free hours numbing themselves with cheap dopamine.

If you had a relatively normal upbringing, you no doubt looked incredulously at the thought that this desperation would one day be yours. You were young, accustomed to older people commenting on how handsome you were, or how good you were at something, or how much potential you had. You believed your future was full of great things. So what happened?

You grew up, that’s what happened. Things got harder. You became caught up in making relationships work, earning a degree, and padding your resume. Years passed and all that potential never materialized into something tangible. You were busy, but never with the most important thing. You never really gave up the vision, but somewhere along the way you became bogged down with an undeniable sensation that somehow, something was not working in your life. What happened to all that potential?

Where Does the Desperation Come From?

Fyodor Dostoyevsky summed up this nearly universal feeling with the following quote:

“You sensed that you should be following a different path, a more ambitious one, you felt that you were destined for other things but you had no idea how to achieve them and in your misery you began to hate everything around you.”

Although those words were penned in the nineteenth century, I have a feeling they ring true to many people living in the twenty-first. The graveyard of unfulfilled dreams is an all-too frequented destination for people from ages twenty-five, to one-hundred-and-five. The world is a hard place, and being born gifted is no guarantee that you will fulfill the measure of your potential.

This idea perfectly sums up that feeling of desperation Thoreau talked about. It comes from not doing the thing that you were born to do, often doing something else instead that you don’t really care about. For lack of a perfect term, I’ll simply call this your passion.

Passions

Not everyone is born knowing their passion. That is okay. But everyone has one. Everyone has something they are destined to do. That is part of what it means to be human. It took me almost thirty years old to figure out what mine was. If you still don’t know yours, it might help to consider what thing you constantly find yourself coming back to. What do you catch your mind gravitating towards when you let it roam free? Chances are your passion lies somewhere amidst those thoughts.

Now let’s assume you know your passion. Fantastic, now you know what to focus on. Except, this is real life and you have a whole bunch of other things that you have to do instead. I’m talking responsibilities: Work, school, family obligations; the list can be infinite. And even if you care about them, these other things absolutely get in the way. This can be frustrating. It can make you want to scream. But you are not unique in this hardship. Few people are born into the right set of circumstances to be able to pursue their dreams without other responsibilities getting in the way. In fact, on second thought, nobody is.

Those “right conditions” are often monetary. The most valuable commodity money buys is time, which means that those born into wealth do not have to spend their days laboring in something that they find unimportant. But here’s the secret: money alone is not what will bring your life and your passion into alignment. You would be surprised how often the children of the wealthy squander their valuable opportunities. In fact, sometimes the money is actually a hindrance. Comfort inhibits effort, so often, wealth itself actually inhibits mastery of a passion.

Do It Anyways

Now that we have disabused ourselves of the notion that money alone would solve our problems and put us on that other path that Dostoyevsky alluded to, what do we actually have to do to get there? The answer is where we started: Follow your passion.

There has been a great deal of cultural debate about whether to strive to turn a profit on your passion, or follow a more practical path. I am not suggesting you put all your eggs in the same basket that contains your passion, and then burn all the others. I am merely suggesting that you do not neglect your passion. The hard truth is not all passions are monetizable, and that is okay. What is not okay is giving up on the very thing that fills your veins with fire and makes you feel alive. Never, ever give up on that.

You may not be able to focus on your passion full time. You may have very little time to focus on it at all. It’s not ideal, but it’s life. It is a natural part of the hero’s journey to be forced to labor under non-ideal conditions before the breakthrough comes. It is a terrible pain to put your ambitions on hold in order to work on things that are unimportant, but necessary. Understand however that this places you squarely in the same company of some of humanity’s greatest legends. Many great men from history were forced to do things that they did not see as related to the achievement of their ultimate desires, and yet they did them anyways. This process is part of the work of rising above your circumstances.

Abraham Lincoln was an uneducated peasant. He put in the work anyway. He improved his mind all the while working menial jobs he did not care about. Frederick Douglas was born a literal slave. He put in the work anyways. In fact, he had to put in considerable work, just to get to the part where he got to do those menial jobs unrelated to his passion. That example more than anything showcases how essential those sucky jobs you don’t care about are to the ultimate result.

If you have potential, but you don’t ever get around to actually doing something, then you become merely someone who had potential, and squandered it. People will never say it to your face, but they will see you as a disappointment. You either have potential and do something great, or you don’t, and become something that people forget about.

So whatever your passion is, work on it. Even though it’s hard. Even though you don’t have time. Even though there are a million and one other things demanding your attention. Do it anyways. Film. Study. Write. Speak. Whatever actions that are required to work on your passion, do them. Oh, you weren’t born into a billionaire family that enabled you to never work, and focus exclusively on want you want? Good. Now get to work anyways.

Managing Other Responsibilities

This does not however mean you can abandon your responsibilities. Responsibilities look different for different people, but they are nonnegotiable for everyone. Chores, studying, working, putting food on the table; you can’t neglect any of these. You have to find a way to prioritize your passions without skimping on responsibilities in other areas of your life. It is part of the journey, and shortchanging this part will come back to bite you.

The key is to do all of it. Great men do great things; they also do small things. You cannot shirk responsibility in the pursuit of passion, but you also cannot sacrifice passion on the altar of responsibility.

To Delay is to Die

The feeling that you are not doing what you are meant to do in life is indicative of untapped potential, and that is what pains you. You cannot control whether you were born with the correct conditions to immediately capitalize on that potential, but you can immediately work on the thing you know you are supposed to be doing. To put off doing what you know you are destined to do is death. People who rationalize not working on their passion get sucked into a life on autopilot, and that kills your soul faster than just about anything.

There is always a way to begin working on your passion immediately. Even if you are in high school and your dream is to be an astronaut, there is an immense amount of knowledge you need to acquire, skills you need to develop. Knowledge is always something you need more of, regardless what the ultimate goal is. No matter what you are passionate about, chances are you need more knowledge about your passion in order to become a master at it.

Gaining the Mastery

Just because you have a passion does not mean you have mastered it. In fact, there is going to be a lot of work for you to become a master at your passion. Just because you cannot work at it full time right now does not mean you get to neglect it. You will need to have developed some degree of competency in your passion for when the opportunity actually does come to do something with it professionally.

You can work on many things in your life. You can get good at a lot of things. You can push yourself to become great at something you do not love because the money is good, or for any other number of reasons. But to achieve mastery over any discipline, you must love it. There is no getting around this. You can never hope to become a master at something you do not truly love. It cannot be done. You may develop some level of proficiency, but that is not mastery. As long as you are working on something you do not love, there is guaranteed to be someone who is better at it than you. This is because when you love something, the work becomes play. And if someone else is playing while you work, that is a game you cannot win.

There is no guarantee that working on your dream will grant the economic freedom to pursue it professionally, but if you do not pursue it, you will never know. And at the end of the day, even if you fail, you can at least fail having your brow marred with sweat and dust and blood, and know that you fought in the arena, and fought for something you loved, so that you never have place with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.