Passion and Career Success

There have been three occasions this past week that I came across the notion of "success" and "passion."

One of them was at a film screening, where the director's advice to a room full of film students was "find your passion and run with it." He had a point. If you know what you want to do with your life (and you have recently graduated college) you are 50% there. I knew and I got a master's for it. So, I figure I am 75% there. Well, what's that last 25% depending on for my ultimate success, then?

The second occasion occurred when I was watching a foreign movie. You know how deep they can get...One of the characters was telling a story of a boy, who saw a picture of a location. The boy just kept staring at that picture for days. In his twenties, he moved to the city where this location was at. He immediately went to that location. At first, he started by cleaning the leaves in the garden and he repeated this again and again everyday. Everyday, until the location owner noticed him and hired him for this job as a caretaker. The boy- then a young man- had no place else to stay. But this location had only one small room that had the best view of the city. So the location owner gave this small room to the young man in return for him completing the chores in the location. The character who told this story ended up summing this up as, "to have the impeccable view out of your window, you have to work with passionately& hard at it."

So, that last 25%  of my success is dependent on working very hard at what I am passionate for.

Finally, third occasion happened when I was watching the trailer of Vanilla Sky- one of my favorite movies. The quote was "What is any life without the pursuit of a dream." I don't want to sound cliche and quote a main-stream movie for you, but it is just so applicable to my situation, that I cannot not quote it. I am passionate about the field I chose and I have been ( and am going to continue) working hard for it. I also am satisfying my life's purpose in pursuing this dream. So this sounds like, even if I might end up considering myself a failure, I will still have lived a life worth living, just cause I will have spent it in pursuit of something I have dreamt about for so long.

That makes me feel great about my life.

Now, I need to get back to work. Until next time, think about if your life's going to be worth doing it all over again, if it ended today.