From 14 to 18, it was so special to feel that shy excitement making a duet with the guy next door amongst cheers from the karaoke crowd. Achievements were never the aim. Having fun and passing requirements was :) Enjoying being friends and learning from young and old teachers alike was rewarding. The SN world was anti-competitive, anti-pressure, the lost child of the school lol
Then for the next 4 years, all they talked about was finding a purpose. Passions have to be utilitarian, even if the utility can just mean making oneself feel happy or content with 'having found one's path'. It's better to partition oneself in a delicately balanced way, such that most highly-valued utilities can be realized. As Steve Jobs, Oprah, and many other graduation speakers have concluded, pursuing one's passions is perceived as one of the surest ways of living a meaningful life.
But then, not everything needs a purpose. Focusing on passions can be different from focusing on life. The former can easily be an excuse for achievements. Would we trade losing the next hour planning and executing one's passion for those few minutes feeling shy or excited with friends and family, innocent, light, and pure? Would we spend the next day growing the same passions even bigger because that's the natural path the passions would lead to, or let life come in and tell you something else, in all its liberty and mystery? Either way works, hardly comparable yet both can be as satisfactory. Yet, knowing the purpose is hardly the decision compass; synching with life may be.
It feels good to when we once felt surfing and 'synching' with life. Recreating the experience could be almost impossible. But we do know what we did NOT think about and what we spent our time on, because of some unknown feelings (gut/intuition). We know what feels right, albeit no purpose, no clarity of passions.
