Stop chasing your “one true passion.” It might not exist.

Trying to solve one’s existential dread by finding a singular purpose is a game won only by not playing.

By Dan Kennedy

My girlfriend and I are waiting for a friend at the airport, and I’m staring across the road at the cargo bays when it hits me. Freight. That’s what I’m meant to do with my life.

I try to explain this to my girlfriend, but my words fall on deaf ears. Don’t I want to write another book? She has a point — a decade has passed since the publication of my third book. But that’s just it. If writing were my true passion, wouldn’t I have written another book by now?

Not that I haven’t tried. I was an anxious shut-in during the pandemic, and I forced myself to write two panicked manuscripts just in case I died or went officially broke as the world shut down. My agent hated them both. He sent me an email suggesting I find a new agent — one who could get excited about a novel based on a Satanic heavy metal band toiling in suburban obscurity and a pair of unmoored ‘90s FM DJs named Machine Bolt and El Farto.

Fair. But what about the other manuscript, the one about the agoraphobic who sold his tech company a decade ago, paid cash for a townhouse in New York, and is now reentering the world because his only true friend, his cat, has died of old age? Same response.

Maybe a passionate writer would defend their work, but for the first time in 15 years, I felt like I was really connecting with my agent. He finally felt like the perfect agent for me. It was a little like that country song where the guy falls in love with his wife all over again as she’s walking out the door.

Sure, I once said that songwriting is my true passion, but that was weeks ago. Freight, Maria. Freight.

Looking at these freight docks, my reaction to the feedback feels like a clear sign that I wasn’t meant to be a writer. I have finally found my one true passion.

My girlfriend has questions. The first: Hadn’t I recently told her that my true passion was writing songs — songs nobody in the world expects from me, mostly because I’m not, nor have I ever been, a songwriter?

Yes, fine. But freight is different. She stares at me now with a mix of compassion and warm confusion. I try to remember when I’ve seen this look before. A montage of her reactions to my various assertions over the years starts playing in my head. I shake it away. Sure, I once said that songwriting is my true passion, but that was weeks ago. Freight, Maria. Freight.

About 11 business days later, my fascination with freight fades, and I am convinced that what I am truly meant to do is drive around the West indefinitely. Like Jack Kerouac with a Volvo and a Chevron card, but unburdened by the writing part. Then I remember that everyone’s doing the van life thing, and the idea loses some of its allure.

At different points over the years, friends and loved ones have admitted to me, with a kind of hand-wringing and existential pain, that they know they just need to follow their hearts and find what they’re passionate about. I’ve even had fellow writers tell me that writing is their passion. In each instance, I think, “Jesus. Your passion?” and stand there quietly wondering what the hell I’m doing wrong. I’m in my 50s and still haven’t found that one thing I’m passionate about.

I envy people who have found their passion — but not as much as I envy people whose hearts haven’t sent them off on the perverse hunt for it.

Thank God I didn’t put off trying things until I found it, though. Leave me alone in a room, and I will inevitably write stuff down. It’s like putting a smoker in a room with an open pack of cigarettes; it’s only a matter of time before they smoke. I wrote the entries in my first book because I thought they might make my cool big sister laugh, my highest goal. When it came out, she called me and said, “Oh my God, you’ve got to be one of the best ones out there!” Game over, Terry Gross. Nice chatting with you, but my sister just called and said I’m probably one of the best.

I started writing books mostly because I started reading books. One night, an agent saw me telling stories onstage and said I should write them down — they felt there was a place in the market for them as a book. When that book sold, I was excited. Over the moon. But I was also simply and soberly adding up how many months of New York rent I could pay with the advance. Almost immediately, my thoughts turned to what else I could do for work when the money was gone.

I envy people who have found their passion. Many are the days when I find myself wishing I were a composer — they seem to be constantly working, driven to create music in every waking moment. I’ve even heard composers say in interviews that they’ve awakened from dreams with ideas for concertos.

But more than composers, I envy people whose hearts haven’t sent them off on the perverse hunt for a singular passion, the treasure ostensibly buried inside all of us, likely wedged somewhere between the biological imperative and the autonomic nervous system. I’m talking about people who simply want to enjoy the winning lottery ticket that is being human on planet Earth. When they aren’t doing what they need to do to make a living, they try out cool hobbies. Maybe they stick with one. Maybe not. That is a full life, my friends, even if a booming industry of writers and influencers wants you to believe you simply must “Follow Your Heart and Find Your Passion!”

Trying to solve one’s existential dread by finding a singular purpose is a game won only by not playing.

This whole idea that one must identify their true passion feels steeped in modernity. You can’t tell me you would find ponderous spiritual seekers in 14th-century England saying, “I know we’re all concerned with the rampant proliferation of unsanitary living conditions, child labor, the plague, and the crippling effects of famine, but what each of us really needs to do is find the one thing we’re truly passionate about and succeed at it no matter what.” Can you imagine how quickly this passion-seeking chatterbox would be marched out of the pub, locked in the stocks, and shamed with a good hurling of rotten vegetables or a stern flogging?

When someone tells me they’ve found their one true passion, I acquiesce with a Larry David-style ambivalent shrug. It’s been two years since my brief flirtation with freight, and since then, I’ve come to believe that trying to solve one’s existential dread by finding a singular purpose is a game won only by not playing.

Here’s the thing: I’ve either never found the one thing I’m truly passionate about, or I’m just quietly, equally, stupidly passionate about everything. Good butter. Books. TV shows. Cats and dogs. The late afternoon light in Los Angeles. Motorcycle rides. Funny ads. Hanging out with my girlfriend. Trees. Birds. Movies. Technology now compared to when I was a kid. The fireplace in my home. Art. Comedy. Aimless driving. Getting a haircut on Saturday.

And sometimes, nothing at all.

I never found the one thing I was supposed to do. I just kept doing things — or not doing them — and somehow that turned into a life. A pretty good one, too. Did I mention the girlfriend who didn’t laugh when I planned out my new career as a songwriter incapable of writing music?

---

Mini Philosophy | Starts With A Bang | Big Think Books | Big Think Business