What's your passion?

A senior executive once asked me about my passion. Sadly I was stumped, embarrassed that I couldn't put my finger on my passion I blathered something about managing programs, developing people, solving problems, blah, blah, blah my lips were moving ..

My passion? Are you freak‘in kidding me? It’s not enough to be present, engaged and seeking to better the status quo, now I have to be a frigg’in cheerleader for something? it's not that I've never been passionate; it's just that well damn I guess I've lost that loving feeling. Shit happens. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not dead ... I love, I am loved, and I'm moved by this glorious gift of life, its beauty and even its ugliness. But when it comes to the kind of passion this person was eluding too, the work kind, I would have to say, "Not so sure"?

I guess my passion should be obvious to me at least that seemed to be implied by the question. Or perhaps it was just MBA speak. A handy disarming blurt meant to throw off a worker bee from their routine to serve some other agenda. Well it worked. What the heck is my passion; I'm not a Toronto Maple Leafs fan so clearly self flagellation isn't my thing. I enjoy all sorts of experiences from travel, to books, to movies, to camping, to working with my hands ... but passionate about one of these? I’m not so sure. I mean I’ve seen passion, my sweetie’s daughter is an up and coming basketball player who has already seen nibbles by Division 1 teams. Now she has passion for the game, she breathes it; she’s intense in training and playing. I get it, but I don’t think I have it. Am I required to? What you can’t just roll through the deli of life taking a little taste of this and that, here and there … you actually have to pig out on something specific to claim having passion?

Shit I wish I’d seen the memo on that one … I could have worked into something. I could have created a whole persona around something really cool like fly-fishing or marketing. But I didn’t, I was too busy living my dopey life from day to day. Now what am I going to do? Geez I’ve got to come up with something that I can say that will achieve two things (1) hide the fact that I don’t have a passion to share, and (2) if pressed claim something so obscure that most people would prefer to talk about themselves than ask me questions about my bogus love. Yes that’s got to be the ticket.

Of course it may be possible that the asker didn’t really give a rat’s ass about my passion … the program I was working on was not placed in their sphere of responsibility, although they wished it to be so …. perhaps what they really meant to ask was why are you MK, doing what you do?

If, at the time, I had my wits about me I guess I could have said ... because I was asked to, because I was and remain prepared to take on a challenge which at best has only a long shot to see the light of a corporate morning, to do something promising but fragile, to take up a challenge that lies outside the daily deluge of mediocrity, routine and conservativeness ... that's why I do what I do. 

Hmmm maybe that's my passion ...

Product loyalty ...

A very special person I know said something interesting the other day. In fact it bordered on profound, although I don't think she intended it so, but then isn't that the nature of profound statements.... something simply said so as to seem obvious, but in reality plumbing the depths of insight.


She said, quite off handily, "I have no loyalty to hairdressers." Accustom to her pithy ways we all stopped talking and looked to her expectantly, she went on to explain. Apparently she tells all would be coiffeurs and stylists straight out that she is for all intent and purpose a hair hooker willing to ply her locks about town in search of the perfect orgasmic "do". Even if satisfied with their work she refuses to be owned by any salon, preferring to remain footloose and ever-ready to strike out on the hair highway.


Being true to complete satisfaction without developing some false sense of commercial camaraderie seems her point. Why marry yourself to one hair stylist, one product, and one outcome. Businesses of every description vie for your loyalty every day; they spend billions of dollars in advertisement and branding every year not just to sell their products and their “experience”, but to own your purchasing soul. Companies want you to buy into them; they want to create a visceral connection between what they flog and your sense of self, seducing you with their promise to the point of automation. I think my friend would argue that buying into a label, defining yourself in any way with a product is to buy into something that ultimately is not in your best interests. It seems to her, and I have to agree, remaining free to go where you want and open to other possibilities applies equally to your commercial experiences as it does to your character.


For my friend being loyal to a vendor, a brand and a product serves only to sell “you” short...