I have many friends who are millionaires, many who are geniuses with an over-160-IQ, and friends who are just super-successful in other ways.
You’d be surprised to know how many of those friends are unhappy.
Happiness has no objective measure of course. Nick Vujicic seems to be pretty happy with no limbs, though when you look at the facts, strictly in an objective manner, you should think that he wakes up every morning feeling miserable. Yet, he has no arms or legs and he seems to be totally fine with it. His wife is totally fine with it. His kid is.
Happiness doesn’t seem to have a reliable subjective measure either. Whatever you do today, there is at least one thing that you’re better at than any of your friends. You’re an amusing success story for your own 6-year-old self. Does it feel like it?
Of course it doesn’t.
Jim Jefferies says in one of his stand-ups:
“When I was a young comic all I wanted to do is to go on stage for 5 minutes and make people laugh. Then I thought: “they better pay me”, and then they started paying me and I went: “I’m better than these cunts, I’m going to be a headline act”. I became a headline act, and then I went to the annual festival, did that, and then I went: “Alright I better move to America to record my DVD”. So I recorded my DVD in America, and now I want to be a movie star and you know what, I’m not a movie star and I want to kill myself.
That’s retarded! I’ve gone further than a man of my looks or intellect should ever go. At this moment I’m in a sold out theatre in fucking West London, this would be a dream of mine as a child and do you know what I’m going to do tonight? Cry myself to sleep.”
We are told to find our true passion, our one-and-only calling, but that’s no easy task either. Is your true calling to draw? Are you more passionate about photography, sports or playing Monopoly with your friends? If you started a Youtube channel about playing Monopoly right now and a gazillion people followed you, would you be happy? Would you want another gazillion people to follow you the very next day? Or, would you feel like a scam, a nobody, a sellout, for settling with this one passion while leaving the rest to rot?
Passion is overrated.
When Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook, he had two other projects he was working on. I’m sure that if you asked right now, he could tell which one he is more passionate about. I’m not so sure whether he knew it back then.
Waiting for passion to find you will never happen. It’s not about luck: if something doesn’t cost you anything, it is, per definition, worthless. You have to go out and hustle, keep bumping your head into hard things.
Our magazine, Yakuzuzu is with the ones who try and try, and try again once more even when everything seems to be against them. With the ones who are lost: the entrepreneurs, the artists, the wannabies who don’t think they know anything and aren’t afraid to learn. Yakuzuzu is with the clueless, who are ready to look beyond the surface.
If it sounds like you, you might enjoy reading The Clueless Manifesto.