Living Creatively, Living Curiously

I don’t have a single powerful burning passion. I’m not one of those people. I had an envy for people who knew early on what they wanted to do in life, and their certainty about it. The burning desire and the early start. The passion.

Those were my thoughts, my identity. Especially in my early 20s. I wished I had that one burning passion. But over the years, things changed and I no longer feel that way. No passion? No worries! I’ve discovered that, more important than having a passion is cultivating your curiosity.

About 8 years ago I came across this interview of Elizabeth Gilbert. She talks about passion and curiosity. About how it can be intimidating and even almost cruel to tell people to follow their passion. Especially, if they don’t have one. She goes on:

“If you don’t – which is a lot of people – have one central burning passion, and somebody tells you to follow your passion, I think you have the right to give them the finger (laughs)… um, because it just makes you feel worse. And so I always say to people, forget it. If you don’t have an obvious passion, forget about it.

Follow your curiosity. Because passion is sort of a tower of flame that is not always accessible, and curiosity is something that anybody can access any day.

Your curiosity may lead you to your passion, or it may not. It may have been for “nothing” in which case all you’ve done your entire life, is spend your existence in pursuit of the things that made you feel curious, and inspired, and that should be good enough.

If you get to do that, that’s a wonderful way to have spent your time here.”

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It was a revelation. A shift in perspective. Suddenly, having a passion was secondary, a byproduct of following your curiosity. Having no passion means you have the freedom to explore. To try new things and experiment. To follow your curiosity and see where it leads you.

Who says you can only be good at, or pursue, one thing in life? That we live our lives following one career/profession? What if you’re interested in trying out more than one field/career? Or if you have a variety of things or goals you want to pursue. We live for an average of 80 years, give or take. Even if you’re in your 30s, 50s or even 60s! There should be more than enough time to learn and do at least one or two more things, right?

A default framework for living life, for much of us, is this:

Now what if instead we use a different framework, and view it like this:

Why not pursue one thing at a time for a span of 3-, 5-, or 10-year chunks, then move on to your next curiosity or interest. And you don’t have to be strict in doing one thing at a time. You can overlap, or mix and match. If down the line you discover that the curiosity you followed evolves into a passion, then stay with it. If not, keep experimenting!

It’s been about 8 years now since I started my journey. I explored and discovered interests. Writing, Travel/Hiking, Snowboarding, and Investing are some of the things that stuck with me. With writing, I started with Facebook posts for my friends, then tried out journaling. Now I have a blog! And I even wrote an online book! Progress is slow, and I’m not on a New York Times best seller list (yet). But I’m enjoying the ride. Most of the time.

Here’s a more specific example:

That’s my own framework, in broad strokes. There’s a lot of space and flexibility baked in there. It’s a work in progress. Things change. But this allows me to be clear with what I want to focus on for the next years. And gives me something fun and exciting to look forward to in the future. You can be more specific with yours, and you can play around with the timeframe. But this works for me.

I think viewing it this way allows for more flexibility and creativity with how you try to live your life.

That’s the vision, at least. The direction of this compass I set out to follow. I’m not certain of what I’ll find at the end of it all. But if I lay down a path that I’d enjoy in and of itself, through creativity and curiosity, then it shouldn’t matter as much what I find or not find at the end. The path itself becomes the thing.

~Prologue

Imagine: you just turned 80 years old. You followed your curiosity, tried new things. A lot of things. Things that made you feel inspired and alive. But you didn’t really find a burning passion that you could stick with. You think you’d feel sad about it, but the opposite happens. You look back at your years, your decades, your life. And you realize you lived your life like a book, divided into chapters of things you love doing the most. Each chapter representing a journey spurred by your curiosities. You have made an art out of your life. The art of living.

You get up from your seat and stand. The strength in your legs astounds you. You feel good and young and healthy. You might even have a decade or two left. You gaze out your window, and with a smug and a grin you think to yourself: Alright then, what’s next?

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Link: Elizabeth Gilbert interview (last guest) — TED Radio Hour: The Source of Creativity