With Passion

I was just reading an interview done by The Star with Martin Yan.

For those of you who don’t know, Martin Yan is one the earliest TV celebrity chefs around for the last few decades. He’s also the most successfully Chinese celebrity chef I can think of in the western world. Kinda like Jackie Chan, but in cooking instead of Kung Fu.

I used to watch him on TV when I was a kid. His knife skills are unbelievable. Watch him slice through a tomato and you’ll start to think that perhaps cutting vegetables isn’t all that lame after all.

Nothing extraordinary about the interview. But I really liked it when he said this “when you are passionate about what you do, work becomes a pleasure. I am willing to do it for free”…

How many people do you know are currently earning a living doing something they are passionate about? I’d say that 95% of us are doing what we do because that’s our job. And that’s our job because earlier, that’s what we studied. And that’s what we studied because our parents (or we) though it would give us a decent, steady job. So we all got exactly what we were looking for… but we still got it wrong.

I met someone who was a copywriter not too long ago. I sat down and shook her hand and said “You have, what I would imagine would be my dream job. You write, and you get paid for it.” The response? “You must be joking.” Later I found out that even though writing WAS her passion, being a copywriter isn’t quite the same as being a ‘writer’ in the purest sense. You had to write what other people tell you to write, not what you want to write. Sounded more like a typist if you asked me.

Seldom do you find people who are actually passionate about what they do. When you do, you know it instantly. No one can ever talk about something their passionate about, and not exude a certain sparkle in their eyes and enthusiasm in their voice. For the rest of us, the thing we do are at best ‘somewhat interesting’, or at worst ‘so f**king boring’.

Whenever I get to know someone new I like to ask them this question:

“What’s your passion?”

And there are ever only 2 kinds of response… those that answer in a heartbeat… and those that go “My passion ar??? ermmmmMMM“. And on that alone, you can usually guess just how well a person knows themselves.

Either way, I love listening to the answers people have for that question. Whatever it turns out to be – coffee, cars, stock market, women’s clothing, photography, real estate planning, molecular physics – you can bet it will be interesting. Because nothing spoken with passion can ever sound boring….

I have known a few friends who have really gone down the road less travelled by quitting their day jobs in pursuit of their passion. With little certainly of success, and perhaps even lesser pay, it certainly is a brave move. But I respect people like that. I think that if you ever find your passion in life and manage to run to it, even if meant losing out financially, it would still be worth it. Even though money is such a critical aspect to our daily survival, happiness and fulfilment and success in life isn’t just about filling your pockets with more of it.



I’d love to be able to do what Martin Yan said… to work at something I’m so passionate about I’m even willing to do it for free.

The problem is, the thing I’m so passionate about doing in life is actually this - nothing. I want to sit around and do nothing. And if I really go into that full time…. Well………. I will probably really have to do it for free. XD

Cheers!