The Art of Doing What You Love
For anyone who grew up in Greece, especially in the countryside, there is a widely common memory of his grandparents telling him what he must do for a living when he grows up. People of that age grew up and built families with many struggles, as those ages were very tough. Most of them managed these difficulties with hard work and strict savings and got used to living in uncertainty. For that reason, many of them believe(d) that their grandchildren must become doctors, teachers, and lawyers, to ensure a future with a stable professional career, and therefore, a stable life.
This was, and still is, the mentality that prevails in Greek society’s reality. There are many examples of people who struggle to achieve the dreams of someone else. There is this belief in our country, that everyone should study in a University to be successful. That cast of mind is first of all offending all the people that make a living without having a college degree and at the same time, it is false and misguiding.
This false guideline pushed many people to study staff they do not like, you cannot produce proper professionals that way. It is very simple to study like crazy until you have a college degree and to be honest, the way to a job position that offers certainty is not easy, but it is a specific path. It may seem easier to follow someone else’s footsteps, but this is not the answer, everyone has to make their own way to what they consider happiness.
On the other hand, more cynical perspectives consider this opinion to be romantic nonsense. They claim that life is not all unicorns and rainbows, that things that you love doing are called hobbies, and that your professional career is something you have to take more seriously. Well, clearly it is a matter of priorities.
Life is way too short to do things that you do not love and as Bukowski said, “I do not have time for things that have no soul”. More practically, a day has 24 hours, in this time frame, your day is divided into 3 parts of 8 hours. As you can notice, if we consider that the average human sleeps for about 8 hours per day, then we conclude that we are sleeping for 1/3 of our lives. Following this reasoning, taking into consideration 8-hour working shifts, you are destined to work for the other 1/3 and live your personal life for the remaining 1/3. So, we can understand that the average person works nearly half his life, determining in parallel that sleep time is not considered functional.
Basically, many refuse to spend so much time of their lives in places they do not feel comfortable with, with people they cannot communicate with, doing staff that seems insignificant to them. Time is way too valuable to be spent like that, time is not money, you can always earn more but you can never turn back time.
We are so used to measure success with profit and titles and forget that the most important thing is mental stability and happiness. Money should be viewed as a tool that can make your life easier, not as a purpose. There are millions of people that make a ton of money and are not happy, people who leave their fancy office and visit their therapist straight away, people who drive Bentleys and take pills to sleep at night. Is it worth it?
Do not get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with pursuing a position with a fancy office or dreaming of buying a Bentley, as long as this is what you want to do and feels right to you. Do not let anyone chart the course of your life, and do not let anyone else decide the percentage of your success.
Concluding, in Mindspace NPO, we want to encourage everyone to believe in their capabilities and the importance of their dream. We want to build a professional environment filled with people that love what they do, and at the same time, we want to build a society where everyone would prioritize mental stability and value their personal goals more than the ones that society considers significant.