DESIRE

(From "A Weekend Note," the editor's letter in Style Weekend, a weekend special every Friday in Manila Bulletin, 9 November 2007)

BLURB
Desire! That’s the one secret of every man’s career. Not education. Not being born with hidden talents. Desire. —Bobby Unser, American racer

I find it hard to advise friends to just do it, to just do what they think they feel like doing.

Nike has made it sound as though it is just as simple as, say, stretching out your arm and reaching for the stars, but it’s really not that simple. For one, there’s just too much space between one’s arm and the nearest star, which is not to say one cannot reach it ever. But more important, does one really want that star?

I’m one of the lucky few, who have known from childhood what I wanted. When I went for it finally after testing the more lucrative field of advertising, I had no doubt I wanted it enough to happily undergo a severe salary beating just to have it. From a junior copywriter position at an advertising agency, I set myself back four years accepting a startup position as a staffwriter and losing the equivalent of the combined salaries of two advertising startups.

And so I have since been living my dream! But I can’t deny it hasn’t been always easy, either. That’s where just doing it becomes tricky: Going after what your heart desires presupposes that you know what your heart wants. In other words, it’s a mistake to follow your clueless heart. It’s like the blind leading the blind.

What’s more, knowing what your heart wants doesn’t make things necessarily easier, except that it’s easier to go through the challenges knowing that surmounting them will amount to something. Some say if you love your work, you’ll never have to work a day in your life. It’s a bit of an overpromise, but I cannot argue that loving your work is in itself a great blessing because you definitely have to love your work to survive the many inconveniences, the stresses, the pain, the challenges, the heartbreak that are all part of the work picture, whether or not you love it and especially if you love it. The people who are only going through the motions, when you come to think of it, do not have to hurt as much because they can simply shrug off the frustrations or simply escape or simply give up or simply leave it to others, who care more, to deal with the problems.

I read in a book that to figure out what you truly want in life, you have to remember what gave you so much pleasure as a child and, in the context of your adult life, find out how you can convert it into a job, a profession, or a career. It’s the simplest trick to get paid doing what you love to do.

In course of my life as an editor, I have interviewed so many young aspiring writers who think it pays to be honest and say, “I really don’t know what I want, but I’m here because I want to try it out.” I think it’s such a waste of my time to talk to jobseekers, who have yet to decide what they want to do, especially if they make it appear they’re gunning for the job on offer so they can earn money while taking their sweet time making up their hearts and minds.

A
post me at aapatawaran@yahoo.com