The banality of doing what we’re told gets bottle-necked at the top of free will. Eventually, one balks at the factory of someone else’s to-do lists.
We do what punctures the heart. When we feel compelled to create life intentionally, the very bottom of our souls opens up.
But outsourcing the work to robots is still in the incipient stages. Most humans are the cogs buttressing somebody else’s PnL in exchange for pellets. Cash is the hard-earned trade-off for subservience. We’re just trying to get paid so we can eat!
The freedom to play is not just reserved for starving artists, though. We can earn sex and cash simultaneously; do what we like and get paid for it.
“Try not to get a job,” pleads Brian Eno. “Try to leave yourself in a position where you do the things you want to do with your time and where you take maximum advantage of wherever your possibilities are.”
Advice is always easier said than done, given its subjective context and self-reinforcing nature. It’s more challenging to identify the work we genuinely enjoy than to find a job for work’s sake. True wealth only becomes a panorama of free time after finding our true North Star.
No passion, no life project
Any struggle in which we can maintain our excitement while driving forward the human spirit regardless of mistakes or misfortune is worth chasing. When combined with grit, the quantity of hope takes on a quality of its own.
Placing creative freedom and happiness at the center of our commitment to life helps resolve personal tensions. The liveness of a passion project is just that — it can’t be forced — and provides our best chance to inject some meaningful serum into our lives.