Profit is Insufficient
What the HBO series “Station Eleven” can teach us about following our passion
For much of my life I was engrained with the profit-first line of thinking. At the same time I fell gradually into the trappings of modern-day life, complete with car payments, credit card balances, Hawaiian vacations, clothes, dinners out, and insurance policies to protect it all. At first it was enjoyable and seemed like a logical way to live, because of course, it’s what everyone else was doing.
But I felt a very subtle discomfort with the trajectory of my life. With each pay raise, expenses rose in tandem, and often so did credit card balances. There was never a satisfaction that came from acquiring more money beyond the momentary excitement of having achieved something seemingly worthwhile.
Follow Your Passion
Then I heard certain life-guru-types talking about following your passion, and when you do all things fall into place. This sounded great, which set me on the path of figuring out what my passion actually was, because I had no idea.
I worked on it. I tried different things, meditated and prayed on it, and eventually found things that brought me joy. “So,” I thought, “all I have to do is put my energy and attention into the things that bring me joy and everything will work out.” Money and success will flow abundantly, and my life will be great.
Well, not exactly.
I’ve seen it many times in others, that when they align their lives with their greatest passion things seem to miraculously fall into place for them. But for me?
“It really works,” I’d tell myself. “Just keep going. Keep following your passion.” And I have consistently heeded my inner calling regardless of the results. Even though on the surface, I could easily judge the results of my life as lackluster in comparison to what I’ve observed happening for my clients and others.
As We Grow, Our Passions Can Change
And yet, something has been emerging . . . very gradually and consistently over time. The difference is that what brings me passion is not so cut and dry. It’s not completely tangible and doesn’t seem to fit neatly into a perceived career direction. So, it’s taken time, and more importantly, the time it’s taken has been necessary to develop the skills to accomplish my goals and more fully follow my passion.
A big reason for the ongoing challenge of feeling like I haven’t yet ‘hit my stride’ is that I keep changing. As the theme of this publication is to continuously peel layers and go deeper, I’ve been doing that for much of my life, which means I keep discovering deeper dimensions of who I am. And as I do, what brings me passion continually morphs.
Not to complain, this kind of life has been amazing, beautiful, and increasingly more joy filled. The dividend of constant change has been constant evolution and the discovery of new horizons. It also means constant re-thinking and pivoting. “Best-laid” plans that I thought were best-laid turned out to be, well, somewhat best-laid at the time, until the next level of transformation brought new plans to the table.
If this sounds like a lot of confusion and turmoil, it’s because it has been. But . . . and this is a big but, confusion and turmoil is a perfect recipe for growth and transformation.
Success Can Look Different for Different People
If my life’s purpose is growth and evolution, I’ve been tremendously successful, because I’ve been growing and transforming continuously for years. In fact, I find it exciting. It’s the passion I feel for growth and transformation that drives me.
But how do you translate that into a career direction? More on that later . . .
If we follow our passion, it will indeed lead to a highly successful life. The more fully we invest ourselves in our passion, the more profitable we’ll be. This works for businesses as well as individuals.
But such profit may or may not be monetary. It may look completely different. There are those who are incredibly rich in skills and talents, family, creativity, and joy. And there are those who are very rich in money and property. My father was one who was very rich in money, and sadly died poor and miserable.
The paradox of profit and passion is that if we pigeonhole our understanding of what success is supposed to look like — in the form of things we acquire, appearances, comparison to others — then what we are following is not our passion, but rather the results we expect to receive from following our passion.
Survival Is Insufficient
Station Eleven is an HBO series of a dystopian future that is not so dystopian. Following a virus that wipes out 99.9% of human population, what results is not a Road Warrior type of existence, but rather a traveling troupe of Shakespearian actors and musicians who bring art to the survivors. Their moto is, “Because survival is insufficient.” Which is a giant departure from the version of humanity that existed prior.
Following our passion is following our passion. It’s not following the result. The paradox exists when we say, “Follow your passion and everything will fall into place.” Instead, we must say, “Follow your passion, so that you may follow your passion.” The unknown results are part of the adventure of life — it’s not about the destination, it’s about the journey.
In Station Eleven they didn’t say, forget this acting, forget this art, we need to survive. They said, “survival is insufficient.” Implying that art is more important than survival. What a courageous way to live one’s life.
Passion Doesn’t Fit Neatly into A Box
And what if following our passion doesn’t neatly translate into a career direction that results in a livelihood? Again, the paradox. It’s possible that we may have several passions. It’s also possible that in our several passions there is a connecting thread that is not immediately discernable. If so, we will never discover the connecting thread until we fully invest ourselves in our passions.
Here’s a mundane example. One extension of our brand strategy work is designing websites for people we’ve done brand work with. Sometimes we are asked to take on the maintenance of their websites once they’re built. But I really don’t enjoy doing web maintenance, and truthfully there are far better people than I for that kind of service. But as people become comfortable working with us, we seem to fall into it.
Then I had this hairbrained idea of offering web maintenance as a service and expanding it. I thought to myself, if we had a couple hundred web maintenance clients, I could do a little of this mindless work each day and make an easy income. Even as I had the thought it felt ludicrous, because I dislike this kind of work. It doesn’t matter how much web maintenance is in demand, it’s not what I’m supposed to be doing.
Truth be told, I don’t even like designing websites, as it’s tedious and often heavily left-brain. I only enjoy doing it for clients we’ve developed a brand strategy with and who I can fully get behind their vision. In those instances, it’s fun to bring their vision to life through their website. And at that point I know their brand so well I can easily visualize how their site needs to look and feel. But merely designing websites for the sake of designing websites feels horrid to me.
My passion is helping people bring their visions to life. That’s what gets me jazzed about the work. If I decided to add a web maintenance branch to our business I imagine it would fall flat, because it wouldn’t be authentic for me. But I provide this service for exactly two clients because I love and resonate with their vision and want to see them succeed in every way. And if they came to me and said they found someone else to maintain their sites, I’d be overjoyed for them.
It's not about profit, or filling a niche, or meeting a market demand. It’s about aligning our work and activity with those things that feel deeply authentic to us. I haven’t become homeless and destitute following this path. In fact, I’ve grown hugely and continuously, and I feel more joyful each day of my life.
Growth and Transformation is My Passion
Growth and transformation is my passion, which means continuously growing and evolving and assisting others to do the same. But how do you make a career around this? One way is the writing of words such as these. Another is by helping businesses and individuals create brands that are themselves transformational — bringing true and authentic visions to life — which is itself revolutionary because it’s not about profit. Profit is insufficient.
Physicist David Bohm. writing in the context of quantum mechanics, referred to our everyday reality as an “explicate order.” His model was a roll of carpeting. Inside the roll is the “implicate order,” a pattern of reality yet to be. I like this model because I believe as aspect of the soul creates a plan prior to each incarnation. In part, Bohm envisioned the unfolding of reality this way because time is a mental construct. Because it has no reality outside the mind, in the absolute or quantum realms there is only the eternal Now.
Practically speaking, whatever our passion, however and whenever the “pattern” we experience as the carpet unrolls, it’s helpful to keep in mind that the implicate reality already exists, just in potential. It’s not predetermined; it’s preplanned. So, we can choose a reality that rejects the soul’s guidance. As our minds unfold in time, guided ideally by the experience of joy—the soul’s positive feedback—the waveform potential collapses and we experience a time just ahead of it when what was hidden becomes manifest.
Whether or not this perspective is how the universe works, it promotes a relaxation that’s more conducive to allowing and flowing (rather than calculating and forcing) which is in alignment with the soul’s agenda.
Money and earning a living in our culture and at this time in history provides a powerful incentive for us to create a practical context for or learning and growth—and a way to serve the whole. It’s good and necessary. It’s always, at minimum, a lesson in taking responsibility. The trap is in wanting what others have, wanting to live as others do—glamour—and make the pursuit of money the goal in life.
Each soul has entered this spacetime experience to fulfill a “unique” purpose, one that advances the soul’s agenda. And ultimately, we’re all in a process of coming to realize—actually know, experience and express—our divine identity. Whether we’re aware of it or not, absolutely everything we choose to do, whatever our level of spiritual development is a context for moving in that direction.