Don’t Just Follow Your Passion by Eunice Hii (Full Transcript)

If you are good at it, just go do it. But then she ended her article by saying, just do anything really. So I was kind of confused.

One artist said “Just move to New York”, another writer said “Don’t move to New York, if you want to be happy.”

And one CEO said “Whatever you do, just listen to your dad”. I can see some dads nodding today.

But the top advice that I found, this theme that came up over and over again was this theme of: Do what you love, follow your passion and Steve Jobs even went so far to say in his commencement address to the Stanford University graduating class of 2005. He said “Don’t settle for anything less, than work that you love.” And this is a theme that I see when I look to role models of mine. Mother Teresa who devoted herself to helping others; Muhammad Yunus, who I love not just because his name sounds like mine, but because he eradicated poverty in many areas by basically developing this concept of microfinance when he started the Grameen Bank and empowered women to become the bread winners in their family.

And Nora Ephron who was able to turn every tragedy in her life into a comedic masterpiece. She wrote, maybe it’s like when Harry met Sally. And I look at these people and whether you admire them or not, the point is that you could substitute any of your role models into his slots and I guarantee you that they would be passionate about the work that they do, too.

And it seems to me that it’s this big question, that graduates have. It’s this question of choice. Do I go down this road where I choose what I love, this passion of mine, where there is probably more uncertainty, or do I go down this other road, get a job, find some financial security and maybe worry about loving life later on. Which one do I choose or maybe I find a road in the middle, if I am lucky?

For the past three years I have actually aired on the side of telling students to choose their passion. In my second year of university, I co-founded an amazing project called Passion Project with a dear friend of mine and my roommate at that time, Tarini Fernando. And Tarini and I had these two big frustrations. It was middle of December 2009, and if you are a student, you know this a very bleak time. It’s the middle of exams. And we just got to talking one night. We had these two big frustrations. We had, on the one hand, this frustration that we weren’t doing what we loved anymore because we were too busy studying. And we saw our fellow students in the same predicament.

And on the other hand, all of these students wanted to make a difference in their communities but they didn’t necessarily know how, and we were wrestling with these two questions of how do we more of what we love, and how do we make a big difference in our community. And so we thought, can we answer these two questions in one project.

So Passion Project was born. We had no resources, no funding. We didn’t even really know how to explain this concept that we had in our minds to our peers. But nevertheless, we went ahead with it. And we have had some amazing successes.

The first event that we put on was a concert at the Pit Pub and we got just under a hundred students to come out. We raised just under $1000 for charities that all the musicians chose. Another event that we had was a photography exhibition which you can see in the bottom corner. And again, all the money that we raised went to charities that the photographers chose.

And over the years, we wanted to move away from the financial model of doing things where we solely donated money to the charities that the artists chose. And we wanted to take a more hands-on approach on how we made a difference in our community. And so we partnered with the UBC Community Learning Initiative in February of this year, and we put on a 3-day reading week project in areas of slam poetry and photography and music. And we worked with great sixers and seveners. I don’t know if that that’s a word seveners in a local intercity elementary school here in Vancouver.

And one of my favorite stories that came from those three days was — there was a little guy named Sam. And Sam didn’t want to share anything that he wrote in his slam poetry workshops. And the poets that were there in the project Francis and Alberto, they worked with him everyday, “Sam, you know, it’s okay. You can get up and share what you have written” and we came to the last year and he still was reluctant to share, he was really shy, but we had an assembly that day in front of the whole school. And Sam gets up, in front of the whole school and shares not just a poem but a full on rap. And I thought that was a huge testament to the courage that can be borne if you are really passionate about something.

So we had these successes, it’s been three years. The project is still running now. And two amazing women, Ritika and [Effowa] now run it and it’s still going on at UBC. And all this time, I was looking at it and I thought that we weren’t doing anything wrong. I thought we were doing a great thing here. I thought that we were leading students on the right track, and then I read this article in the Harvard Business Review. And I can only compare this article to torrential rain on a beautiful summer’s day. It was the type of article that I needed to take deep breaths while reading. It was the type of article that I needed to put down and go for a long walk and then come back to. And it was a type of article that really made me question if we are doing the right thing at the Passion Project. And yeah, we are just doing the right thing and leading students on a good path.

So by now you’re probably wondering if you haven’t read this article, what the author of this article said. Cal Newport, a professor who wrote this article. He said 3 main things. The first is that our generation — Generation Y — so that’s everyone born from 1983 to 2000. So if you were born before that or after that, you are in the clear.

He said that our generation is known as lazy, as pampered, as high maintenance. Actually one critic said that we are the hardest generation to maintain when we come into the workforce. And the New York Post called us the worst generation ever. Cal Newport then went on to say that it boils down to the fact that our generation is entitled, and that that entitlement actually comes from the fact that we have been told over and over again to follow our passions.

In fact, he shows this graph from Google Analytics that shows the rise in the amount of times that the phrase “Follow your passion” has been published in the English language. And as you can see there is a dramatic increase in the years when Generation Y or generation was in our childhood years, when we were young and impressionable and didn’t know any better and took this advice.

Cal then concludes that the only solution to this problem, this problem of us being the worst generation in history is to completely throw out this advice – Follow your passion. I heard a gasp. Wow!

So I was a little devastated, but that was the end of it. But the first thing that really struck me was the fact that we are called the “Worst Generation”. I had no idea when critics said that we were probably too busy at home on Facebook to really notice. So I wanted to see — I wanted to understand if we were really the worst generation. And I wanted to kind of study the generations before us to see, are we really the worst generation.

So I want to invite you on this tour that I took. We are going to call a generational history tour. So I want you to imagine that you are in an art gallery. But instead of art on the walls, each piece of art is actually a generation. So I want you to walk with me down this long hallway that’s an art gallery.

And the first piece that we come to is the Silent Generation. That’s the generation of our great grandparents and grandparents. They were children that grew up in times of war and depression. They were children that grew up to build great institutions and bureaucracies. And they didn’t like risk. They were much more adapters.

If we walk to this next picture, we see the Boom Generation. That’s the generation of our parents, the baby boomers. They took more risks. One critic said they were self absorbed ‘yuppies’. And they were the age of Flower Power and really rebelled and questioned authority.

If we walk to the next generation, we see Generation X, those just above us. Those are the ones who many say are children of divorce, so they have much resilience in them, they were big risk takers.

And, then we come to our generation. I have chosen this mosaic which we will come back to later, to represent our generation, a technically savvy generation, we invented Facebook and Twitter. We demand work-life balance, and the title of this generation is the worst generation.

So even after taking that huge tour of all these generations before us, I still had no clear answers as to whether we were the worst generation. And I thought to myself, maybe I really do have to accept. All these critics were saying that we’re the worst generation. And maybe I really do have to accept that this advice: follow your passion was really to blame.

But where I completely refused to accept Cal Newport’s article was where he says the only solution is to throw out this advice. I refuse to believe that we can’t become – we can’t become a better generation and follow our passion. I don’t think that the two are mutually exclusive. And so I think that we can become a better generation and follow our passion at the same time. But maybe we just have to remember a couple things along the way about following our passion.

So the first is — we can follow your passions, but remember to work hard. Where generations before us grew in times of war and depression, I would argue that our generation has probably grown up in a much easier time. And so for me, myself personally I don’t know if I really know the meaning of hard work. We can follow our passions but not expected to necessarily be our job. I went to this talk from the furniture designer named Martha Sturdy in Vancouver, and she designs amazing prints in her art and I went to her talk expecting her to talk about her work but instead she spent the entire talk talking about horses, which was her passion. And it just made me realize that here’s this woman who is incredibly passionate but it wasn’t necessarily her work.

We follow our passions, even if we don’t necessarily know what it is yet. Julia Child, this legendary woman who is known for bringing French cuisine to America, she didn’t know that she loved to cook — she didn’t even know how to cook until well into her mid-forties. And we can follow your passions but we have to remember that passion is a privilege.

About a year ago, Tarini Fernando, the other cofounder for Passion Project, she wrote a blog post about her passion as a privilege. And it’s something that I’ve taken with me all of this time. It’s the photo from one of our latest events. So many of us can only follow our passions, because maybe our parents worked really hard and gave us opportunities that they themselves never had. And so we can follow our passions with gratitude.

Some of you in the room might be wondering, what about student loans. I have so many bills to pay. Passion is the last thing I’m thinking. I would actually have to argue with you that you’re living in one of the best times to follow your passion. There’s so many examples out there of men and women who are following their passion without even leaving their responsibilities.

If we look at sites like Etsy, you can sell anything that you make at home online. If we look at other websites like Kickstarter, men and women start businesses without any money, they just post their idea online and people from around the world donate money to their idea.

I actually also read an article about a woman who landed her dream internship just by tweeting at an executive from [Imager Corporation]. So there’s so many ways in which you can reach out to communities just from where you are. You don’t need to fly to New York.

The biggest lesson I learned didn’t come from any of my role models but actually came from looking at our Passion Project framework. This pen diagram was designed by a woman named [Jackie Tench], she’s an amazing designer. And she designed this diagram for us just to explain better to people what we do at the Passion Project. And the biggest lesson I’ve learned about following our passions that it doesn’t mean anything to follow our passion, if it isn’t in the service of others. And so we need to spend just as much time discovering what our passions are as we do understanding the needs in which the communities that we live in. And that’s where the true potential lies.

There’s a quote by a theologian named Frederick Buechner who said that your vocation is where your passion meets the world’s greatest need. Your vocation is where your passion meets the world’s greatest need.

I like to think of it as simple economics where your passion is the supply and the world’s greatest need is the demand, and we need to find that sweet spot, that intersection between the two. It’s not about choosing our passions, or choosing to not follow our passion. It’s really about marrying our passions to a greater purpose in the communities that we live in.

As I was writing this talk, I was losing a lot of confidence in what I was saying, because when I look to all the people who write amazing career advice out there, they are really successful people in this world, they are people who have made it so to speak, and who am I to be given this debate to you when I haven’t even made a dent in what I’m supposed to do when I graduate. And out of nowhere I heard Nelson Mandela saying, that quote about how our greatest fear is not that we’re inadequate but that we’re powerful beyond measure. And then he goes on to say, who are you not to be — who are you not to be bold and beautiful.

And so I turn this question back to you, if we go back to the mosaic that I’ve chosen to represent our generation. I want you to imagine that your one piece in that mosaic — one tiny piece, and you have the power to change what critics are saying about our generation that’s currently called the worst generation for now.

And I ask you — you little piece of mosaic – I ask you, who are you not to be — who are you not to choose passionate and purposeful lives, and to all of those people who still ask me, Eunice, what are you going to do when you graduate? I have to tell you that I still have no idea. But I do know that I’m going to be passionate about it.

Thank you very much.

 

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