Don't let what you hate be your guide in life.
I felt at my the best when I did well what I hated the most. I was raised thinking that the thing which you hate doing is the one you should be focusing on improving because it's a virtue if you end up doing it well.
For instance I sucked at math all my childhood but I was good at literature and arts. Instead of practicing and focusing more on what I was best at, I was forced into taking extra classes of mathematics. Why? I wasn't gonna end up a mathematician even if someone pointed a gun at my head. So instead of being a happy kid that did what she loved and having fun, I found myself waking up with a bitter torment, dreading the day ahead.
I told my parents that I hated it and wanted to quit, but the response I got was "You don't always do what you want." They encouraged me to take upon myself extra homework at math, they did everything possible for me to be better at math, even though both of them were literature teachers.
The virtuous thing to do, I hence learned, was to engage in the pursuit of what I hated the most, do it well and overcome it. The only real satisfaction could come from me getting a high grade in math class. What I was good at was self explanatory, obvious and not necessarily important and the people that should've validated me didn't really care, so I didn't think it was anything special that I excelled in arts. But it would have been special if I got good at what I hated.
The message that my young brain received was: choosing to focus on what you love doing is just being lazy and taking the easy way out. It's almost cowardly, I thought, because true challenges that help you grow the most come from the areas you're not good at.
I always bulldozed myself into doing things that were frightening because saying no to them would have been weak, giving into an uncomplicated, undemanding thing, therefore I would not evolve... So I spoke in public even though I hated it. I did accounting even though I hated it. I took on paperwork and bureaucracy that I hated just so I could prove myself I coudl do it. But it was actually me against myself. It was a constant torment to live in my skin. Nothing was ever good enough because I only encouraged myself to do what I despised and when I compared myself to people who were doing these things and were good at them, I always fell short. But what I didn't know was that their secret was that they loved what they were doing, while I hated the living daylights out of it....
There is no excuse for not doing what you love. There is no excuse for striving towards that, at least. Doing what you love is none other than your purpose here on Earth. So not doing that which sparks the uttermost joy is a blasphemy. Not doing what you love is betraying yourself. It is going against your instincts and your well being. It is you hating yourself, not you striving to evolve. It is you expecting yourself to love being punished. It is you drinking poison and expecting yourself to become healthy.
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