Kill the Passion. Give Birth to Time.

Most people think of a passion as a something they love doing. Most people try to make this passion as a career because apparently true happiness doesn’t start until you can make a living through your passion.

I imagine full-time writers as people who wake up excited to write. People who enjoy writing 1,000 or more words a day.

But that’s not the case. Obviously, writers get some kind of good feeling from writing since they still do it when nobody is telling them to.

We seek our passion to find out what we’re meant to do in life. We’re not meant to do anything except what we choose to do with our time.

Dr. Martin Luther King Jr wasn’t meant to be a Civil Rights leader. He chose to use his time to fight for Civil Rights.

Jesus was the only one who knew what he was born to do. Everybody else chooses what to do by choosing what to do with their time.

Jesus knew why he was born but he wasn’t meant to come to earth. Jesus only came to earth because Adam and Eve chose to sin. Jesus chose to enter time and use his time to save us.

Jesus knew his existence in heaven before he came to earth. Like my pastor said, “we are spiritual beings having a human encounter.” But, no other human being is conscious of their heavenly existence when they enter earth. Nobody remembers being in the womb and being born. Most people can’t even remember exact moments before six years old.

Another interesting fact is that Jesus was a carpenter. Jesus was born to die for our sins but he didn’t make a living from being our savior. Jesus never said, “since dying on the cross is my purpose let me figure out how to make it my profession.”

Jesus didn’t make money from his ministries and miracles. Jesus and his disciples often relied on the generosity of others for their lodging and food.

Jesus could have made a fortune performing miracles. But he didn’t identify himself by a passion. He identified himself by how he chose to use his time.

Time mattered throughout Jesus’ life. From the time that Jesus called his twelve disciples, to the time of the Last Supper, and to the time that Jesus gave up his life on the Cross. Jesus could have gave up his life at the time the Romans arrested him just to save agony and some time.

When I say give birth to time I don’t mean that we can create more time than the time that’s already created as if when it’s time to Spring Forward, you can’t Fall Back another hour so while everyone loses an hour of sleep you gain two hours of sleep.

You give birth to time by giving your time to certain things. Like I can give an hour to writing this article or I can give it a week and write a paragraph a day. I can give an hour to video games or I can give eight hours and then tell my doctor that I have a video game addiction when the simple fact is I don’t have control of my time.

The issue with thinking that you’re meant to do what you enjoy doing is that we often imagine the end goal instead of acknowledging the process. Like if I imagine myself as a Rockstar then I’m going to think that my passion is to be a musician.

The problem with this is that I’m not acknowledging the process it takes to be a successful musician. I’m not considering taking time to practice, learning to read and write music, the stress of booking shows and being on the road. People often think that if they can see themselves doing something then the outcome will eventually happen.

Most people come to find out that they don’t enjoy the process as much as enjoying the imagination of the end goal. I don’t enjoy writing as much as I enjoy imagining myself as a multi-millionaire writer. But that’s ok. I don’t have to make myself fall in love with writing either. All I have to do is make myself write.

Whatever you want to do in life you have to acknowledge the process and just do it (No Nike ad intended). I love imagining stories. Imagining stories makes me believe that I’m meant to be an author or a screenwriter. But I’m not meant to do anything if all my stories only stay in my head. I’ll only become a writer when I write my story ideas into a complete story.

Most people dream about being rich sometime. Only a few people figure out how they can get rich and execute. Most people just think that if they’re meant to be rich then it’ll just happen like winning the lottery or some opportunity will present itself.

Like being a NYTimes best-seller isn’t just about publishing a book and hoping to get lucky. Although, that has happened to some people. But if I deliberately want to be a NYTimes best-seller then I have to write a story that I at least think is pretty good and market it. Books don’t sell just by being good. Books also need good marketing.

So if I say I should do what I’m passionate about then I’ll be homeless. Because I’m passionate about drinking a Mai Tai on foreign beach and that doesn’t come cheap. So I got to find some way to fund this passion. Writing is a tedious task and I’m not passionate about hard work. If I need to get rich enough to fund my trips to foreign beaches drinking Mai Tais then I rather use writing books to get there.