One of my favourite poems and one which I’ve quoted here again and again is by Jalaluddin Rumi:
Today, like every other day, we wake up empty
and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study
and begin reading. Take down a musical instrument.Let the beauty we Love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.
I’m suddenly struck by how lucky I am to be doing what I love to do – writing nonsense – and making a living out of it. I remember talking about this to Bob Blumer last month when he was here promoting his show, and just last night, mrbrown and myself were trading nonsense tweets about loving what we do for a living.
I can’t remember exactly what Bob said about loving what we do because I was too easily distracted by the food we were tasting on the tour, but mrbrown has often said something to the effect of “we didn’t know better, that’s why we dropped out of school and did our own thing”.
I think we both knew better, and that’s why we’re still pursuing what we love, and we’ve been damned lucky to have been rewarded along the way, making our ongoing journeys worthwhile.
It’s not as easy as saying, “I’d rather be doing something else”, then up and leaving your current career. You have to be sure of that something else. You have to love that something else.
Once you’re sure, it’ll take you on journeys so rewarding, you might end up in Singapore making popiah skin in front of a bunch of bloggers:
Do you love what you would rather be doing? Enough to chase it?
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