The Holiday Spirit

As we enter the holidays, I hope you revel in good spirits and cheer.

In the United States, obviously the main holiday is Christmas when we celebrate the birth of Jesus the Christ.

Due to his profound wisdom, Jesus is widely considered a prophet.

To state a few obvious examples:

Jesus repeatedly taught the importance of love when instructing that we love our neighbors as ourselves.

He taught the heart of service through the Gospel of Matthew with the affirmation “Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me.”

And during the Sermon on the Mount, he taught the importance of forgiveness and compassion when he said we should “Turn the other cheek.”

But today, I wanted to relay one of His lesser known teachings.

From the Gospel of Thomas…

No, seriously, do NOT follow your passion

In the last post, I wrote about the advice to follow your passion. And today, because we are approaching that time of year when people make New Year’s resolutions, I am making a follow-up post to reiterate the point that the advice is actual dogshit. If you don’t wish to agree with me, let me put the words in the mouths of two other people. The two people I will reference are Robert Greene and Jensen Huang.

I have heard it said that all of your heroes should be dead, and the point is well taken. The reason for that advice is because the verdict is in and it is final. For example, if you study the entire life of Henry Ford you will discover only the first half is worth learning from. Today’s examples are both still alive, so let us stay focused on their advice in this particular domain of passion.

Mr. Greene is an author and clearly a highly intelligent person. He has written a number of books, including an entire book on the subject of mastery. Mr. Huang has built one of the current darlings of Wall Street. The name of his company is Nvidia and they are known for making the computer component called the GPU, or graphics processing unit.

People who tell you to follow your passion are usually trying to sell you something useless