3 Reasons Why “Follow Your Passion” Is the Worst Advice for Teenagers

You live multiple lives within a single existence — why limit it with passion?

When I was 17, my entire extended family sat in a room together to confront me, saying, “You have no idea what you want in life!”

It was proved in a one-sided and one-dimensional discussion that when you don’t want to do what your family thinks you should do, you have no idea what you want in life — can things get worse for a 17-year-old guy?

“Why is it not okay to not know what you want to do in your life at the age of 17?”

It should be normalized RIGHT NOW.

Did our parents or this so-called wiser older generation know what they wanted to do in their lives while they were seventeen?

I wonder if they are telling themselves a twisted narrative that they had it all figured out. If that were the case, the newer kids wouldn’t shape up as they do.

The reality of growing up in a middle-class household in a small town in India — you have no idea what all is possible — if only you had the exposure to experience life in its full glory.

Your friends and family won’t support you.

Get over it!

They’re just gonna shove their beliefs down your throat. If they don’t have the life you want, why even care about their advice?

Although you can choose to do the exact opposite, that might help.

Long story short, I did what my family wanted me to do — Engineering. I didn’t have much in control.

But I had the choice of moving to the city of my choice. I had a few admission calls from a few institutes.

I moved to Pune (a cosmopolitan city near Mumbai, India).

I had just spent a year in a small town where everyone — from my family to my closest friends (back then) only spoke about one thing — career and the kind of jobs they’d get after college.

What makes us so excited about becoming highly-paid servants? Societal conditioning?

I misunderstood their survival instinct as their passion. I thought all of my friends were so “focused on life” that they spoke only about one thing.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

1/ Passion limits the worldview

Passion originally comes from the Latin word passio, meaning to suffer or endure.

And in order to suffer for something, it needs to be worthy. And for passion to be worthy, you need to have a relationship with it. And to have a relationship with it, you should have spent enough time with it.

Passion is not the clarity of what you want, and it’s a paradox.

Peer pressure and influenced dreams have spoiled more lives in India than the bad schooling system.

On the first day of Engineering college, if someone asked me, or any of those first-year kids — why did you join the Engineering college?

The most common answer would be, “Because my friends are in Engineering colleges too,” and the other one would be, “Because it was my dream to do Engineering.”

Though both of them are dangerous, the second one is a killer — some of these kids have no idea that it’s not their dream.

It was something that was sold to them.

“You don’t date someone just because others would like to date them.”

Passion is the most overrated word in the modern society today.

Find something you love and let it kill you — Utter B.S. Part I

Don’t be passionate, be obsessed — Utter B.S. Part II

Do one thing, master it — and your life is all set — Utter B.S. Part III

It’s not that all these words don’t have meaning. Until we juxtapose them correctly, they reflect a deranged meaning.

Passion is for losers. Passion is like having hobbies. Don’t chase passion. Chase your curiosity. If you want to do something worthy in this world, be curious about problems.

“Be obsessed not about people, or things — be obsessed about solving problems.”

Passion is for the wimps. We do something as a hobby, feel great about it, and think it’s a passion.

Especially in India, we complete our Engineering or medical studies first and then decide what we really want to do with our lives.

After finishing my Engineering, I got a job as a Software Engineer. In less than two years, I quit my job and chose a creative life. I joined a film school and pursued filmmaking along with screenwriting. It was my passion (or was it?).

Passion limits our worldview. For three years, I watched more than 1000 films (one or more than one film every single day). I started seeing stories everywhere — sure, that was helpful, but there was something I was missing.

“You can’t tell stories if you are not living a life.”

And to live a life, you need to go beyond passion — you need to encourage your curiosity.

Curiosity helps recognize problems in the world.

2/ Teenage is the age to explore

Weirdly, teenagers who know what they want to do get a lot of admiration from adults in our society.

The problem is that these adults have no empathy, and they like everyone and everything who thinks the way they do. It’s so important that teenagers make their own unique mistakes in life, and you can make mistakes when you’re trying new things.

“When you explore the world, you realize the possibilities — then it’s very difficult to settle for less.”

What’s the point of your life if you want to confirm every step before taking it? Where’s the adventure in certainty?

This kind of life decision will never make you ready for real life because real life will not knock at your door before its arrival.

Exploration will open you up to the world's uncertainties and will train you to embrace them because you won’t have a choice. I travelled a lot in my 20s — it had a lot to do with spending fun time with my friends, but it was more than just that.

Travelling teaches you about different cultures. It exposes you to the people who live a completely different life than what you do. It often brings you closer to nature because there's nothing better to do while you’re on the journey.

3/ Age is just a number, and regret is real

Even if you find what you want to do for the rest of your life when you’re 40, you’ll still have a lot of years to do exactly what you want to do.

But if you don’t live your life in your 20s, you might not get a chance to do that as you can in your 20s.

After a certain age, we become fixed in our ways — the way we like to live our life, what we eat, how we deal with our health and hygiene, and we’re comfortable with how we live — we’ve figured out how to live our lives. To make changes in them unless it’s necessary is a tedious task. My point is that your 20s is a time when you’re still malleable and open to living differently.

Many of my friends working in the corporate industry tell me how they admire what I do and regret choosing a corporate career path.

They regret living a monotonous life and also tell me how they sometimes, find themselves thinking the same thing regularly on a daily basis.

“The worst punishment in life is learning to live with regrets.”

Rather, make those mistakes — you might find them fatal in that moment, but they’ll be the stories you’ll tell in the future.

Last

The person who came up with the idea of “Follow your passion” must be a guy who is in his 40s and has finally figured out what he loves doing.

Now, he’s telling others not to waste their time till they are in their 40s and rather follow what they love and find it quickly. The point that he’s missing is that he discovered what he loves doing by going through the life experience of 40-odd years.

“Whatever diminishes your experience of life is not passion; it’s a hoax.”

To end, there’s one more thing about passion that a lot of teenagers don’t understand —

Passion does not compel you to do something; rather, it’s a by-product. You do something first, and then you feel the joy as a consequence of that action.

Passion is a passive word. Logically, you shouldn’t be following something passive and resulting from an action. An idea that motivates you to take action would always be a superior idea to follow.

Curiosity creates questions in your mind. Follow your curiosity to get the answers.

The path of curiosity you like the most is most likely to be the path you’d love to walk on every single day for the rest of your life.

Follow that curiosity.

For me, writing every single day is the path of curiosity that I follow. I write so much every day, but I’ve never felt tired of writing — that’s because the act of writing was never something that I was passionate about or chased.

In fact, writing has always been the medium to chase my curiosity — and till now, I possess the humility to have the curiosity — I’ll continue to walk on this path.

I hope for you to find your curiosity, too.

Until next time,

Ciao!

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