Is Doing What You Love Complicated?

My friend Kamal - who is definitely doing what he loves and helping others to boot with his new venture helping folks collectively pool funds for gifts or their favorite causes and charities - sent me Paul Graham's latest essay, How to Do What You Love, with this note attached: "The definitive intelligent essay on doing what you love." Paul starts:

To do something well you have to like it. That idea is not exactly novel. We've got it down to four words: "Do what you love." But it's not enough just to tell people that. Doing what you love is complicated.

I've been traveling in tsunami-struck Thailand for the last month and have met dozens upon dozens of volunteers who quit their jobs for extended periods of time, directors of newly formed foundations, and various owners of hotels, bars, dive shops, restaurants, bakeries and more who are doing precisely what they love.

I'll say upfront that rarely do I meet Americans. Thais, French, Belgians, Germans, Swedes, Canadians, Australians, Brits, Scots, sundry expats living in Hong Kong and Shanghai and India, you name it - but few Americans.

Sandra, a friendly nurse-practitioner from Canada, came to Phi Phi, a resort island with limestone crags and turquoise bays hit hard by the tsunami, in February 2005 to set up a community medical center after the local clinic was wiped out. Still an unpaid volunteer into late December, I spoke with Sandra about HiPhiPhi, a successful grassroots organization on the island.

On one hand she understands my question about how she managed to pull this off for nearly a year, but on the other she knows that I know already know the answer. There is a tinge of impatience: "You just make it happen. It's a choice."

When I explain that my readers may want a teeny bit more guidance on how to do this themselves she explains that she isn't attached to material possessions or the security of a pension. Still I sense the question doesn't fit. It bristles like ill-fitting underwear.

I'm reminded of the title to Peter Block's book, The Answer to How is Yes.

"Granted, I came to Asia to do volunteer work," says Tilo, a stonemason from Colorado, who is a key player and a construction consultant for the Tsunami Volunteer Center. "I was building a soup kitchen in Ko Samet for the low season. At the time of the tsunami, I should have been on a boat to a small island off Railey where no one survived, but I stopped for an extra fifteen minutes to make a phone call to my Dad at the market inland."

"When I showed up at the TVC [Tsunami Volunteer Center], I felt everything had lead up to that moment," continues Tilo. "If you would have told me all this last year would have encompassed, I wouldn't have believed it."

Talking with Tik over the scent of longan nut, poppyseed, chocolate, lemon cheesecake, and tiramisu sitting on the counter at the Stempfer Cafe she tells me she has a biotechnology degree from a German university. Before I can censor myself, I blurt, "Then what are you doing here?"

She explains how she hated working in a food control lab.

"I thought making cakes was hard, but it's not," she tells me. It dawns on me that she is not a waitress, but the co-owner with her German husband. And more importantly, in her last year in Germany she chose to study baking.

I realize you can flip the question: What am I doing here? A backpack journalist jotting notes in eight-dollar-per-night bungalows while her electrical engineering diploma just rots away.

In fact, Tik's background will serve her well when she opens up the dream baked goods factory and distributes her packaged treats all over Thailand. And having grown up in this province she wants to give work to its people too, she says.

"The farung call me Mr. One Love", says Rakdeaw, whose name literally means 'one (deaw) love (rak).' His degree in agricultural education usually takes him to farmers in the north provinces, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Burma to teach them how to grow organic crops.

These days, Rakdeaw is teaching indigenous kids called the Moken at their learning center through Foundation for Children in Tung Wa. He talks to me about globalization and the need to preserve their unique culture. "I'd like to have a library here with Moken [not a written language], Thai and English books. Write down the history and culture of the people. Create a Moken dictionary. Now every day we have old people come and teach five Moken words to the children."

He shares with me tidbits of his knowledge of the Moken.

"They have no pockets," explains Rakdeaw. "What do you mean?" I'm thoroughly confused. He gestures placing his upturned palms into a bowl.

"They get everything from the sea. It is like gold for them. Always the sea gives fish and whatever they need."

Ah. They put their trust in the bounty of the universe, not their savings accounts.

I am beginning to comprehend.

p.s. The first photo was taken by Mwa - make sure you get the nasal W just right as she insists - at the Tung Wa learning center. There are 82 kids there. Mwa and Mr. One Love are pictured in the second photo. Mwa was quite the photojournalist and I didn't get my camera back until the memory stick was full. Rakdeaw says her father navigated his boat right into and over the wave "just like in the movies" and thus saved two foreigners that were on board. Like many other families in Phang-nga province, she lost her mother and sister in the tsunami.

Comments

[John Seiffer]

It depends on what you love. Some things are complicated. If you love doing them, then doing what you love is complicate.

Paul Graham's essay was about doing what you love in the context of making a career (if not a lifetime vocation) and a decent amount of money. Obviously the fewer other things you love to do with your live (make money, raise a family, leave a legacy) the simpler your life can be. But simpler is not necessarily better (or worse).