And you'll never work a day in your life. Nonsense.
Do what you love and you will work every day of your life and if there is an afterlife, you will want to be working there too. The difference is, you will enjoy all of the work. You will embrace the challenges as each is a deepening of what you do, therefore, what you love.
We hear such statements and we dismiss them as platitudes or nod in an 'I know, I know' gesture to indicate that we have heard it all before and we already know. Hearing, knowing and understanding are all quite different things.
Most of the time, when we hear what we have heard before we act as if our recognition of the words means that we know it well enough that we understand. This is definitely not the general case.
The statement, do what you love has gone largely over the tops of people's heads for most tend to think that once you do what you love, life becomes easy.
It becomes simple, not easy.
It is simple because you know exactly what you are to attempt each day, each moment and that is whatever cultivates and develops that which you love.
It is insanely difficult for to do this you will do it for it itself, not for some pay-off (although reward may come, it is a symptom, not the goal), you will do it regardless if you are good at it or not, fail consistently, or succeed rarely, whether people agree or support you or are against you, and whether people even know do it.
How many things do we have in our life that we can honestly say we do not care if we get nothing, if everyone dislikes us and is maybe even hostile toward our actions? How many things are we willing to do completely, to the best of our ability even if we get zero in return or the cost to continue is incredibly high?
Have you noticed that the things people generally put their majority of effort into are the things that aim to realise a return on the investment, something that people will support, admire or feel grateful for?
There is nothing wrong with this, but doing it to get something out is the type of work people try to avoid. The type of work that looks to get the most gain for the least effort.
Doing work to put something in is the type of work that requires maximum effort for whatever improvement maximum effort achieves. It is the type of work that delivers meaning, regardless of any result.
Achievement is possible in both, success and failure is available to both too.
The difference is perhaps that after success in the first, the gains are then used to buy completeness. The completion of the task is not the realisation of completeness in the individual
Achievement in the second realises completeness, even if the success is a failure. Just the act of doing what one loves in the moment is a movement in completeness as it is not bound or directed by anyone or anything else except the individual looking to put all of themselves into it.
I don't think there is anything simpler and more difficult at the same time for to truly do what one loves, one must truly know what that is and to do that, one must truly know themselves completely.
That is for another day.
Taraz
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