The hardest thing to do is what you love.
It’s a long and difficult process to discover what you love; what truly makes you come alive. It includes a series of epiphanies about your own errors of judgement and direction. It demands brutal self-honesty. It requires tedious and dangerous trial and error. It cannot be found by mere reflection, but deep reflection has to occur alongside experimentation. None of this is easy, and you’re never done. You change, and what makes you come alive changes. The journey toward it is endless and adaptation and adjustments of your goals are continuous.
That’s just to discover what you love. Once you’ve begun to remove the chaff and hone in on a direction that makes you fulfilled, actually moving in it is even harder. You have to muster the grit and determination to move toward it, even when the individual steps themselves are grueling. You have to continue to remind yourself of what really awakens your love of life, and not let yourself off the hook pursuing anything less.
It’s much easier to find and do what you mildly enjoy, what you can tolerate, or even what you hate. Anyone can stop the discovery process short and find what feels comfortable in the short term. Anyone can choose not to chisel away the distractions; not to get to the core of what makes you fulfilled. Anyone can treat what they love as an unattainable object that exists only to torment and tease. Anyone can come up with mediocre, safe, reasonable, sound, and predictable goals and activities.
People say when you do what you love you never work a day. It’s easy to hear that and envy those whose profession seems to be something they have a lot of fun with. It is true that when you’re in the zone pursuing your passion, it doesn’t feel like work. But discovering that zone, and making yourself enter in is more work than anything.
Some people think work is hard because they’re not doing what they love. In reality, they haven’t been able to do what they love because they’re not willing to work hard enough.
Finding and re-finding what you love, and moving toward it every day, is the hardest thing in the world. It is also the most worthwhile.