the non-existent childhood passion
What childhood passion you lost to adulthood? they ask. One of the common opinions about life’s purpose and how we’re supposed to live our lives seems to be that, what you loved to do as a child meant something, and if you could re-find that passion, it will make you immensely happy, if not simultaneously very successful. So here it goes.
As a child, I dreamt of being a writer. What do you want to be when you’re older? An author, I would always respond. My friends wrote in my 2nd class yearbook that they wish me a very successful life as a famous writer. So what happened? Before I start yapping about how belonging to a middle-class family and our less-than-perfect education system made me get a safe, high potential engineering degree, I will elaborate another theory. Bare with me: I think being an author was never my passion. The truth is, my 8-year-old bookworm self had learnt to survive through books, and therefore loved looks, felt safe being around books, but never was fascinated by storytelling as an act, nor creating worlds. I was all about being lost in a book, disappearing from the loneliness of my perfect little life.
So in a way, I think my “lost passion” is buried even deeper, but I don’t know what else is under there, so I’m afraid to dig it up. My guess is that it’s just empty in there, no secret talent, no buried passion that is lost to the realities of the adult life. No, just nothing.