“I have no special talent. I am only passionately curious. – Albert Einstein” Good Earth Sweet and Spicy

It’s humbling, isn’t it? To hear that arguably one of the greatest minds in the history of humankind views himself as having “no special talent” is a breath of fresh air. Great, does this now mean that we can all stop comparing ourselves? I think yes.  

I’ve spent a number of years attempting to answer this question for myself: What are you passionate about? Every time I tried to answer this question, I came up empty handed. Dust and cobwebs seeped from between my lips as if a mummified version of myself was walking this earth. Not having passion meant not having a soul and the answer I always gave was cold and stale. 

Do something you are passionate about. How many times have we heard this? Find something you are passionate about and do it as your work. Then, you will never work a day in your life. I’ve searched and searched and searched and with each attempt, have come up empty handed. Did I not have any passion? Surely, if this was the case, I was doomed. 

I have always been one to be interested in things. Ask my wife, it was a “problem” for a while. I’d get deep into something, a hobby, then would find myself in shallow waters nearly as quickly as I fell in. One fall, roughly ten years ago, I decided I wanted to take up snowboarding (again, I went often in my high school years). I bought all the things that were needed, then spent the winter at the mountain every Monday and Tuesday, consecutive weeks on end. Then, that was it. Since this said winter, I have gone snowboarding twice, maybe three times. I had done this with many other things as well. I bought a motorcycle one summer, took it down the Washington and Oregon coast, came home and parked it in my garage. I sold the motorcycle the following week. I once purchased a coffee roasting pot, many bags of organic green coffee beans and spent weeks, months roasting coffee in our garage. I had intended to start a cold brew coffee company. I did the research, priced everything out, made variations of different concentrations using different home roasted coffee bean profiles. Then, I stopped. As an aside, a small piece of me wished I had carried forward with it as I was doing this before the cold brew coffee boom. But that is neither here nor there.

I finally came to the conclusion: I was a man with no passions. Then recently, in the past few years to be more specific, I came across a quote by Elizabeth Gilbert, which said, “Follow your curiosity. Passion is rare; passion is a one-night stand. Passion is hot, it burns. Every day, you can’t access that.” Then, separately by means of universal divinity, I heard from her audiobook, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear:

“Passion can seem intimidatingly out of reach at times – a distant tower of flame, accessible only to geniuses and to those who are specially touched by God. But curiosity is a milder, quieter, more welcoming, and more democratic entity. The stakes of curiosity are also far lower than the stakes of passion. […] Curiosity only ever asks one simple question: “Is there anything you’re interested in?” Anything? Even a tiny bit? No matter how mundane or small? The answer need not set your life on fire, or make you quit your job […]; it just has to capture your attention for a moment. But in that moment, if you can pause and identify even one tiny speck of interest in something, then curiosity will ask you to turn your head a quarter of an inch and look at the thing a wee bit closer. Do it. It’s a clue. It might seem like nothing, but it’s a clue. Follow that clue. Trust it. See where curiosity will lead you next.”

Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear

In a single moment, my anxieties washed away. I realized my lack of passion was not bad. Not in the slightest. Rather, it’s something I should be grateful for. I have always been a person of many interests and it is curiosity that has kept me engaged for so many years of my life. Curiosity led me out of the hair industry to go back to school for engineering, then led me to abandon the path of engineering and shift to accounting, which in turn has led me to my current employer (a place where I have made incredible friends due to its outstanding culture). I would change nothing if given the opportunity. 

There is a reason I came across that first quote on curiosity. There is a reason the universe further interjected the above passage from Big Magic into my awareness. Lastly, there is a reason an Albert Einstein quote, printed on the tag of a tea bag, sitting in my pantry, uniting the concepts of both passion and curiosity, showed up in my life when it did. It has called out that the only true thing I am passionate about is my curiosity. That to keep the spark alive in life is to keep following my interests, to continue to let my mind wander, to explore, see where it will take me. I believe we would all benefit from this way of living. This has been the blessing of written word. I can now explore my curiosity via my mind, to my hand, to the pen, to the paper. It costs next to nothing but pays back everything.