Finding your passion.

I just spent a week away, intending to do not much more than walk until my buttocks started screaming, then drink some Malbec whilst slow cooking some local meat on an AGA . I did that and whilst doing that I also managed to find some time (I know - How does she do it?) to read two books I loaned from the library and in the battle of the Kens -  Sir Ken Robinson vs Non Sequitur Ken Tynan there was a clear winner.
You can see my other post for the winner, this one is about the loser. Yeah, Sir Ken, winner of the Benjamin Franklin Medal for the Royal Society of Arts, whose TED lecture has been watched by over 3 million people. What a loser. Which is kind of what Ken's point is; if we judge people's intellect on academic, analytical qualities we miss letting them flourish in their true calling. Sir Ken's first book 'The Element: How finding your passion changes everything' proves his point in practice; you need to find what you do best and do it (or find out what others do best and let them do it) Sir Ken is an excellent orator but unlike Kenneth Tynan is a good but not an excellent writer, but that's okay right, you can't be good at everything can you?
'The Element' isn't necessarily a self help book, although it's title sounds like it is and well, it just is, in places, but largely it's more of a discussion about the nature of creativity in which Sir Ken, covering similar ground to his excellent online talks points out the problem and leaves us to find the answer. The problem being that education does not value or teach creative intelligence, thereby devaluing a wide majority of peoples talents and progress. Sir Ken uses the book to list examples of various people, whose talents nearly went unrecognised by Educators, who found success, fame and fortune when they discovered their element. His examples range from musicians Paul McCartney and Mick Fleetwood to actors; Meg Ryan, to cartoonists, sculptors, Writers and world class pool players. Sir Ken clearly chose this range of examples in an effort to show the diverse range of creative options available as well as a marker of the success that can be achieved when you discover your element. Much in the same way as I look up to those artists and think, well done you have achieved money, fame and success, Bully for you, I can now add 'finding their element' to that list. Yeah, I agree Ken, finding your element would be a fantastic thing to do, hold on I'll just go check if I can find it at the bottom of my bag amongst the bottle opener and broken pencils and euros - no probs!
Oh no, it's not there, and, oh yeah, I remember why, because actually finding the element is probably the hardest thing you could ever do and believing that finding your element is easy is probably one of the most counter productive things you could do and I'll tell you why.
1. People's talents don't tend to match jobs exactly, just like there is no one partner out there for us (yeah, hate to burst that bubble guys), there is no one job either. You may be a great practical problem solver, which could mean being a detective, a teacher, a mechanic, a theatre technician. There are a whole number of jobs you could do, it is more important we discover what our best skills are, not what the best career might be. There were no examples in the book that revealed how complex some job definitions are. These leads on to my second point.
2. No one job involves one skill. You may be an excellent sculptor but your probably not going to get anywhere without networking skills, business acumen and marketing too. In most jobs, we have to do a combination of skills we are natural at and probably terrible at,  and normally whilst we do the former we have to do much more of the latter to survive. I may hate spreadsheets, but I have to do them well if I want to fill in arts council applications.
3. Just because you find your element, you can write a little, you are not necessarily going to become the next Arianna Huffington, where were the examples in the book of the jobs with salaries of under £20,000 or even £20,000 - £30,000. I know, why should we aim low? Yet, the great majority of people would be happy to be in a job that they feel vaguely good at, that pays enough to make sure you don't slip into the overdraft too far each month and can only feel like a failure when they don't get one of 'those' jobs. Much like the subtitle, one of the best self help books out there 'How to Become slightly Happier and get a bit more done', aiming for the top can sometimes be demoralising and unrealistic.

I thought of one of the sections in Oliver Burkeman's book throughout reading 'The Element', it was the  section 'When you might not want to bother finding your passion'. In it quotes Cal Newport who runs an academic advice site who warns against thinking that passions are 'some mysterious Platonic form waiting for you to discover.' He argues that passion itself is also created and not found and that any number of activities could suit a person, by stopping focusing on whether we are doing the right thing or not or whether  we are in our 'element' or not we stop obsessing over whether we are doing the 'right' thing and remember that many things can become a passion through hard work.

I have probably been too damning in my critique, as always, the book is an easy read and if you look for it there are clues throughout as to ways you might be able to recognise what you are good at; the environments you enjoy, the things you like. I worked out that I like drinking wine and being in the countryside, maybe that's my element, who knows, I've just got to get on with and see.