Doing what matters 3

In my second year I decided to take up Greek as a third foreign language. I did it because the professor who taught it was highly recommended to me by several people. It didn’t matter that it was Greek – I would have taken up literally any language if the professor was any good.

This was because I didn’t really feel like a student, and I really wanted to. I very quickly realized that my university studies were giving me so little, that there wasn’t one single professor that inspired me in any way and that I would get almost nothing out of them. I wanted all of these things, and so I sought them wherever I could.

In my third year, I wanted to approach one of the few interesting professors, who taught culturology, and ask her if she can be my unofficial mentor. In my final year I wanted to enrol into another faculty after I finish my studies, because I thought I would get the experience I was missing out on.

I never did any of those things, apart from a brief stint with Greek, because other things would pull my attention away. On the other hand, there were things in which I had almost unwavering motivation and sense of purpose. When it came to activism, even when I was in heavy doubts whether what I was doing had any purpose, I could never bring myself to quitting. Something in there made deep sense to me, though I couldn’t figure out what.

There were glimpses along the way, after certain projects and experiences, that there was something deeper that could be found in what I do. But, I was yet to truly find it.

Then, for the first time in my life, I fell in love with something I did. During that time I got an answer to why I wanted to study Greek or approach that professor: My being hungered for meaning, for a purpose, for a way to express itself, and up till then it wasn’t finding it in the things it did, and so I would look for something that would give me all of this.

On the one hand, much is up to chance when it comes to when will you find the thing that is your true passion. Some are lucky to stumble upon it because their parents exposed them to this sport or that instrument, and some people, and this I now find fascinating, have known since they were kids what they want to do.

But a lot of us, even when exposed to many things, simply didn’t connect with them. They were not that something through which we can express our being. They were not our element, as Ken Robinson would call it, nor were we in flow when we did it.

Yet it seems to me that finding your passion can be a lot easier than we think. There are courses and classes on so many things all around you, and if you live in a smaller place, there is still the internet, which can expose you to practically everything. So, the first step is to explore and see if there’s anything that grabs or at least catches your attention – it’s as simple as going to a different class of some activity every week, until you stumble upon something interesting enough.

The second step is to try it and not give up after the first few months. I was lucky to go crazy about tango from the first step I made and have my feelings about it only intensify over time, and I knew that my learning process will have its ups and downs, and so quitting never felt like an option. On the other hand, a lot of people seem to cool off after the first rush of enthusiasm – they hit the plateau which is normal for any activity, after the initial quick pace of learning. Yet, they don’t push through this plateau, and in the process they might quit something that could have become their true passion.

I was up until recently making the same mistake, when I least expected it: After finally falling in love with education and activism and finding my personal purpose and passion in them, I ended up distracted by other things and not focusing on the projects that mattered to me. In the process, I lost some of the flame I had for these things.

But tango also came along, and one of the many things it taught me was that your work is like a person – there is a difference with falling in love and loving it. Love takes time and effort, and as the work I put in my language workshops brought its rewards, so did being pulled away from it bring its consequences.

Today, my school of activism started, and next week so will my Japanese language workshop. Over time, through them and other similar projects, I will see if that flame I felt was something more substantial, or merely one big passing lesson. I also have to see if I can truly be a teacher in all of these things – a teacher in a sense different from what the term usually implies. More on that tomorrow.