Wednesday, December 31, 2014

35 Passion versus pension

People sometimes make light jokes at my passion for a safe pension! The usual choice that become-great books advocate is: Passion over pension. This means, you are asked to follow your passion even at the cost of a regular income, because guaranteeing a pension essentially requires a long-term savings plan, which requires a steady income, which comes from a steady job, and so on.

Of course there are people who have made it good the hard way, after years of struggle and dedication, and we all admire them. Indeed, all the great things in the world have probably been achieved precisely by such driven souls – all the inventions, the great treasures of art and literature, great empires and also, sadly, great atrocities and disasters. These few thousand individuals in history have literally defined what it is to be human. The present series of homilies is obviously not meant for such individuals, who are quite unlikely in any case to be stumbling around the Web searching for stuff to browse. On the other hand, single-minded pursuit can often turn into an unhealthy obsession. What we are discussing here is meant for the remaining great majority, people who have a variety of likes (and dislikes), who have different expectations from their jobs, their hobbies, their pastimes, their leisure and work, and so on. For such of us, working a steady and long life at our jobs, our work organizations, and our careers or (if we are lucky) our professions, literally defines us. We do not get to define the world, unlike the thousand greats of history.

The wake-up fact for us is that there is rarely just one thing that we are meant to be doing in our lives. Interestingly, very few actually stick to the professions they got their education in. I haven’t come across the statistics (if I do, I will incorporate them here), but when I look at all the classmates in my chemistry batch at college, only a handful actually became chemists (professors, manufacturers, inventors, researchers of chemistry). Others turn up in unexpected places – one was finance secretary in the central government at the same time I was the head of the forest service! There are bankers, artists, activists, authors, analysts, managers… very few chemists. You get the drift… so what you did in college need not become your defining qualification, and you will probably end up doing a bit of many things over a lifetime.

When you are not destined for greatness in one particular field, you have the challenge of creating meaning for yourself in whatever you happen to be doing at a given period in your life. Even in a profession, where you would expect to be doing the same thing over a lifetime (thinking of surgeons or lawyers here), circumstances may conspire to give you breaks and changes in between. I was a chemist-turned-forester myself, and expected a lifetime of planting trees (this is meant a bit tongue-in-cheek!), but ended up doing many other things: cutting them, for a start, but also teaching, researching, managing companies, sitting in secretariats… even sitting in a foreign university doing a PhD (about which I will share my experience shortly!).

Instead of sitting and moaning about having to abandon one’s passion, why not get down to whatever is going on in our lives at the moment and applying ourselves to it with passion? Of course this can seem a bit synthetic and even heartless at times, as though passion can be poured out of a bottle, but at least dedication, enthusiasm, commitment to the organization’s goals and to the best interests of our co-workers and clients, can be good substitutes for the so-called passion we have to leave aside.

Here's another thought: there is a favourite ploy of greatness salespersons (self-actuation writers, that is) of posing the question: when you're dead, and find nobody at your funeral, what are you going to regret more: that you spent less time at the office, or at the home? (OK, that's a bit of a caricature, because when you're truly dead, there are obviously other things you're going to be worrying about; but only a little, because the question is ususally posed at your deathbed!). Now I know of very few persons who would be willing to swap a career of jobs outside the home, of business trips and parties, assignments and challenges, for a sit-at-home lifetime. There has to be a balance, of course, but the first thing every young person wants as they grow up, is to be rid of the control of the parents and relatives, and strike out on their own (financial assistance, however, being always welcome if it comes with no strings attached).

So when the question is posed in training programmes and public sessions, which will you choose – your passion or your pension – I usually cause some giggles by emphatically voting for the latter. With a pension secured, I may still be able to follow my real interests after retirement – like writing that masterpiece (which we all thought we would produce once we bought our first word processer!), but without the pension, there would be neither. So the  advice to those wanting to strike out on their own and follow their star, is to think well before giving up the “day job”… or abandoning the spouse with the day job! Which is why our talk about retirement necessarily involves long-term savings and investment plans, growth of savings over long time periods, and other such unexciting things!

(You could say I have a ... passion for pension!)

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