What do you do when your passion doesn’t measure up?  When your best work is considered average?  When your goals go unmet, your progress stops, and the audience boos?

What do you do when you’ve tried one interest after another, and you’ve fallen short in all of them?

What do we, the audience, tell this person?

Is it OK for the average to enjoy their work?

What meaning will our work have when it has all been superseded by machine intelligence?  That day may be closer than you think…read Automate This, by Christopher Steiner.

We lament the loss of love of learning, while we pressure our kids for straight A’s, while we pressure them to go to Ivy League schools, to get high paying jobs, while we measure and compare them in every possible way.

Why are we surprised?  None of that is about learning; it’s about being better than your peers, better than Europe, better than Asia.  We want more, so that we have more than the next guy.  If we’re doing better than our neighbor, then we must be doing OK.

School has become one great endless competition.  There is no more status conscious place on earth than the university.

Joy has come to me by focusing on the work.  I try to clear everything else from my mind; no thought of my audience, no thought of my “grade,” no thought of my peers.  I want to focus on my work, and experience the joy of working.

Here’s what I’d tell that person:  “Do the work you love, admire those whose work you admire, and learn from them.  Live within your means, and be a blessing.”