I was listening to a podcast where a man talked about looking for a house to rent. He found one advertised in the newspaper and went to check it out.
There were five guys living there and they showed him around. There wasn’t much to see. There was hardly a stick of furniture in the place. They didn’t even have beds! They all slept in sleeping bags on the floor.
“What’s the deal?” the man asked. As it turns out, the five guys all knew each other through skydiving. And any time any one of them contemplated buying anything domestic, like a table or a chair or a bed, he would think “I could buy more jumps with that money.”
This is passion.
Passion is forgoing a bed and sleeping on the floor because you have better things to do with your money than buying a freaking bed.
How many people do you know who are that passionate? Sure, we all make little sacrifices here and there, but how many people in your life are so turned on by something that they would gladly say “I can live without a bed.”
A lot of people would call it insane instead of passionate. Sleeping in a bed every night is one of those things that we all take for granted. It’s normal. It’s something so expected of us that a bed isn’t considered an aspirational purchase, like a big home or a luxury car, not even if you’re poor. I mean, you need a bed. Where else would you sleep, right?
Discard the blinders of tradition for a moment and just imagine that you were one of the skydivers in the story. Imagine that you were so excited about what you were doing in life that you could not bring yourself to buy what we all consider to be a basic modern necessity. A bed to sleep in. A freaking bed.
Why don’t you have that kind of passion in your life? Why don’t you love anything with that intensity?
Life without passion is nothing, it’s less than zero. Living without passion hurts more than sleeping on the floor.
If you think you have a passion but you wouldn’t endure torture for it, you don’t have a passion. What you have is a mere interest.
Interests can be engaging, and they can help you to discover your true passion. But being satisfied with mere interests is like driving around in first gear. You’re using a fraction of your potential. And you’re not truly living.
Passion is when you drop everything else in your life, hit the accelerator, and hope you can make it over the state line before the cops catch up with you.
A passionate life is intense, all-consuming, rapturous, beautiful. Anything less isn’t worth your limited time on this planet.
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9 Comments
How ironic that I found this post now. I moved recently to my first unfurnished apartment, and I’ve been sleeping without a bed for 3 months, because I simply have more important things to do with my money. I was sleeping on the floor for about a month, until I got a couch free from a neighbor who was moving out and now I sleep on the couch. It’s not that I don’t want furniture; it’s just that on my list of priorities, furniture is pretty much rock-bottom. There are other things to do with my money: mainly paying off debt and otherwise solidifying my position in life. But when my mother found out I was sleeping on the floor, she was horrified. As you said, she saw a bed as so basic a need that it was almost inconceivable to not have one and not really care about it. Sigh….
Is it passion? Or addiction? Because this is entirely focused on one thing: emotion. And no rational person bases their decisions entirely on emotion. I slept on the floor for years, and as a result endured crippling back and joint pain that hugely interfered with my ability to do anything productive. It’s only recently that I managed to find a type of mattress that lets me sleep fairly comfortably, so I can wake with only minimal pain and get on with my day.
Now, me, I have a passion for playing video games. I’d rather do that than pretty much anything else, and, yes, as a result I’m basically a street person, living in a tolerant friend’s house. I wouldn’t call this a good mode of living.
Passion is all very well, but it is not the goal of life–it is, like everything else, a servant of your life. Where it encourages you to improve and grow, it’s a good thing. Where it encourages you to stagnate and rot, it’s a bad thing. Telling the difference is not always easy, but that’s the task of your rational mind.
Passion can rip you to pieces just as easily as it can make your life glorious. The trick is not having passion–it’s having passion for things that are chosen by your rational mind as actually being good for you.
> Because this is entirely focused on one thing: emotion. And no rational person bases their decisions entirely on emotion.
How do you know that the passion I’m talking about isn’t the result of rational thought? How about when you fall in love, and you can’t stop thinking about your girlfriend and have to see her and spend money you don’t have on her? Since that’s a pretty normal reaction to being in love, you might rationalize it by saying, my subconscious knows that this person could be essential to my future happiness, I’m only getting older, I can’t let her get away, etc. It’s not normal to value skydiving so highly, so you might think the resulting passion is irrational. It’s not.
> I slept on the floor for years, and as a result endured crippling back and joint pain
What about the Japanese who for centuries slept on tatami or futons. Many (usually the older generation) still do. I know people who have back pain that can only be kept in check by sleeping on the floor. Personally, I think that back pain is mostly psychosomatic. Rarely can any physical problem be found.
Regardless of whether sleeping on the floor is good or bad for you, the point of all this is what if you had something in your life that was so great, you would sleep on the floor to get it?
> Now, me, I have a passion for playing video games. I’d rather do that than pretty
> much anything else, and, yes, as a result I’m basically a street person, living in a
> tolerant friend’s house. I wouldn’t call this a good mode of living.
Is it a good mode of living? It really depends on your goals and personality. Some people don’t need a lot and would enjoy having few attachments and living with friends. Some people don’t buy into the cultural norm that you, in order to be successful and established and happy, need to own a big building just to sleep in and eventually hold all the crap you buy. You can’t call that way of living good or bad all on its own.
The question is, are you happy? If you couch surf so you can devote your time to video games and you find that you’re not satisfied with that arrangement, then you need to change something. Personally, I wouldn’t make huge sacrifices for video games, which I think are boring. But with my playing hockey and skydiving, my life is sort of like a real life video game.
> Passion is all very well, but it is not the goal of life–it is, like everything else, a servant of your life.
Yes it is. My goal is to feel excited and alive and turned on and in love with my life. Passion is a result of living a certain way and embracing certain things.
> Where it encourages you to stagnate and rot, it’s a bad thing.
At exactly what time in history has passion caused someone to wake up spontaneously at 5 am without an alarm, because he’s so excited about stagnating and rotting that day?
> Passion can rip you to pieces just as easily as it can make your life glorious. The trick is not having passion–it’s having passion for things that are chosen by your rational mind as actually being good for you.
Why are you buying into this emotional / rational dichotomy? It’s not necessary to apply that to every single thing in life. Rationality is not something we all struggle with. The reason I feel passion for certain things is that I’ve already decided that they are very good for me. I don’t know how it could be otherwise. I don’t have passion for things I don’t understand. I don’t have passion for things that hurt me. Now whether passion x is worth the physical risk, or worth the money, or the time, or whatever, is a different evaluation. You can rationalize pretty much anything. You could argue very logically that skydiving is too risky and expensive and therefore irrational, or just the opposite — that we’re all going to die eventually and there’s no point in living well within the margins of safety so you can stretch your mediocre life onward for as many long, boring years as possible.
The article has nothing to do with emotion versus rationality. Again, it’s a needless distinction. What if your life was so filled with desire for something — say it was rationally justified and logically vetted beforehand if you wish — that you would give up a lot of normal things to get it? I can think of a certain novelist who lived in near-poverty well into her adult life, pursuing a crazy dream that you could argue very logically had little chance of ever succeeding. Was that novelist completely irrational? And what do you think kept her going and helped her across the finish line? Desire, passion, and love for the work and the eventual results.
I don’t think you understand my article at all.
I have a funny story just like that. A friend had just graduated college and would be moving to a new city for a job. She wouldn’t be making very much to start, about $32,000 per year. She was telling me how her mom had her all set up with a furniture store, which would deliver new furniture for this small apartment — dining set, couch, that kind of thing. The couch alone would cost $1200.
So I said to her as politely as possible, this is insane. If you need a new couch that badly, go to IKEA and get one for a few hundred dollars. Or get a used one. Or a freebie. I have a friend who is very wealthy but has no qualms about taking furniture off the side of the road (in fact that is where he got one of his couches from). But $1200, on your income?
Guess what her mother’s reaction was? Pretty much along these lines — but you need a couch — what if you have company — you can’t shop at a thrift store, we’re middle class — everyone has a couch, you need one.
This is the attitude that keeps people poor — not living on the street, but in chains slaving away for their masters so they can afford all this stuff you’re supposed to have. Question what your true desires really are, or whether they come from cultural norms (such as “I need a couch”). Realize that every dollar you spend is a dollar you had to earn serving someone else’s interests, possibly doing work you’re not that crazy about — is what you’re getting worth it? Are you living your life a certain way, with certain expectations, only because that is all you’ve seen? Is there another way to live? Could you be happier with less — but, strangely, ending up with more when you look at it differently?
As far as I’m concerned, the company can sit on the floor!
Some people find a pleasantness in having a balanced life. In Taoism, it’s a moral good!
Life can be a rich symphony, rather than just ONE NOTE PLAYED REALLY LOUDLY.
There are many paths. Focusing on one or two notes is very effective. A lot of the people I’ve been practicing hockey with over the last four years come once a week or less. I focused on it for nearly four years, staying on the ice four or more days a week. So I’ve gotten 20 years worth of experience (at their speed) in a much shorter time. I could have been more “balanced” and played a little hockey now and then… took a skydiving lesson once a month and gotten the license in 2 years instead of 2 months (many people do take that long)… and meanwhile life is passing me by.
Well, I like my job (I basically write software) and I make a lot more than your friend, and my job is very secure at the moment, and I admit there are some things I want and can afford and so am willing to shell out money for. My apartment is very spacious and has lots of amenities; I finally got a cat after wanting one through all my school years; I’ve done a lot of shopping the last few months in order to build up my business wardrobe (that is pretty much done now). But I view the good clothes as an investment that will last a long time (and I like looking good in them!), and I take pleasure from having lots of space, from having a cat, from having a washer/dryer in my apartment that doesn’t require me to run out in the cold every 2 weeks or save up my quarters to do the laundry. And even with these things, I still live on less than half of my income, so it doesn’t worry me too much to let a little money go on some luxuries once in a while.
I write software too. I develop iOS apps at the moment. No fancy wardrobe required!
I found some people online who sleep on the floor or a Japanese style mat out of preference, for the way it feels, or for not having a huge bed. Every time I think about moving, I think of how annoying it would be to move my bed and chairs and other stuff. And I don’t even have a lot of furniture. I think it would feel nice not to have to carry these huge objects through your life, as long as the floor is comfortable. Hey, a lot of people say it improves their back problems.
I can’t imagine buying a couch, just because it would be this huge thing to deal with and have and eventually move. I think I’ll just enjoy other people’s couches.
Good luck with your software job. Saving all that money, you’ll be able to do something important and worthwhile with it someday that others would struggle to do.
“I write software too. I develop iOS apps at the moment. No fancy wardrobe required!”
Well, right now I work for Chrysler, so the dress code is business casual. Before I worked for the Corps of Engineers, where I wore jeans and t-shirts. Y’know how it is, the big places tend to be more formal, whereas the smaller places and the startups are more casual. But there are always conferences and interviews and days where you have to deal with the higher-ups, so I figured as long as I had to have a business wardrobe I should do it right.
“I found some people online who sleep on the floor or a Japanese style mat out of preference”
That was what I was doing before I got the couch. I’d probably still be doing it if my neighbors hadn’t moved.
“And I don’t even have a lot of furniture.”
Yeah, when I moved in I bought a microwave oven, a chair, and a pad to sleep on. I have since purchased some bookcases. Cheap ones.