Your life is short. Why not pursue your passion?

This is my rationale:

1. You’re gonna die one day. You might die today, tonight, tomorrow, a week from now, a month from now, a few years from now, or a few decades from now. At best you’ll live to be 120 years old. At worst you’ll die today.
2. Knowing that death is 100% certain, you really have no other worse downside. The only things we fear include impoverishment, negative social stigma, etc. But there’s really no “worse” thing than death.
3. You’re alive and conscious, which is an absolute certainty. You have control over your life, and you have free will.
4. Knowing this, how do you desire to direct your free will in life?

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Passion is under-rated

You hear a lot of advice nowadays like,

“Passion is overrated”.

I disagree. I would say following your passion is underrated! Meaning,

Society tells us NOT to pursue our passions in life, because it will not make us a productive worker-bee.

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Too much of modern society and contemporary thinking is based on John Stuart Mill’s “utilitarianism” thinking. The basic concept is this:

Utilitarianism is to maximize happiness for the most individuals in society.

And in order to do so, we need to only do things which have positive “practical utility”, which contributes to our individual happiness, or to the happiness of others.

Now the problem is this,

Much of what is considered good or useful in utilitarianism comes down to money, efficiency, stuff, goods, and material things.

Therefore if you pursue anything that doesn’t have an economic product, it is considered illegitimate, “a waste of time”, or bad.

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Life is more than accruing money, stuff, and material things. When you die, you can’t take money, wealth, power, and influence with you. But when you do die, you have things you can leave behind, like your name, legacy, and the memory of the good deeds you did for others and society.

Generally whatever we are passionate about is good.

If you’re passionate about something, you will put a lot of hard work and effort into it, without being “forced” to do so. And you will end up doing and creating stuff which is truly amazing and awesome; things which can benefit you and others!

You’re not gonna starve to death. So why not pursue your passion; which makes life worth living?

Let’s not worry about what is “useful” or not. Art isn’t technically “useful”, yet it is probably one of the few things which make us human. Art isn’t useful in a utilitarian way, yet without art, life wouldn’t be worth living.

Let us continue to pursue our passions, our art, and disregard whether others will find it “useful” or not.

Blaze on!
ERIC