Surprised & saddened to see approval of this in so many quarters over my twitter feed yesterday. I don’t see good advice here at all, but a desperately cynical attempt to co-opt youthful potential to lifetimes as corporate drones by extinguishing hope, joy, pleasure & morality. https://twitter.com/mouneer/status/1342559926611271681

As an endeavour in the mass excision of young people from their souls it is worthy of Mrs Coulter herself, and no less harmful not only to the young people themselves but to the society and world that we live in.

From the start the framing of the question by addressing ‘passion’ makes for something that is easy to mock & dismiss – anyone who has seen a ‘contestant’ on reality TV talking about the 20 things they are passionate about (matched only by their phobias) but that they do little

about, or indeed noted that every single person on Hinge is ‘passionate about travel’ will find it easy to nod in agreement at the dismissal of this trivialised and devalued word. What is really being dismissed however isn’t flighty ‘passion’, but the very idea that you can seek

to work in an area that you already enjoy, which you find intrinsically interesting, where you may have established knowledge and competency, networks and a sense of belonging and community. Every bit as importantly an area that is consistent with your values, ethics/morality

and the sort of world that you might like to live in.

So brazen is this kidnapping and attempt to infect you with Stockholm syndrome for the corporate world that the alternative offered up is tax law; not only possibly the most unlikely thing for anyone to actually wish to spend

time on but also…. well tax lawyers are those nice people that help billionaires and huge corporations avoid paying the taxes that are their dues to a fair and decent society. No gentle incremental seduction this… straight to the Dark Side for wealth and status, all or nothing

The one piece of unarguable truth here is that in life there will be adversity & dark times; moments including at work when you seem to be facing relentless and unendurable headwinds, feeling alone and lost in the dark, questioning everything including what you have chosen to do

with your life. How telling that his assumption is at that point that you will regret and likely abandon the choice you have made to follow a path guided by your values, goals, interests and pleasures – when in truth the nourishment and validation that choice will likely have

provided you up to that point will sustain and strengthen you, the community you belong to (not a feral dog eat dog world) will likely rally round and the first warming rays of the new dawn will appear sooner rather than later. But what for the corporate tax lawyer staring into

the cold dark abyss? Staring back will be the dollar, the suits, the wasteland of a lucrative job well done for clients paying no taxes… except perhaps for the lucky few who will glimpse in the dark a tiny flicker of the still burning flame of once tightly held dreams & hopes,

realising that it isn’t too late.

In order to give this all up you are promised that you can learn to love tax law because, after years of application, sweat, toil & the abandonment of your dreams you can have prestige (membership of the better golf club), wealth (better suits,

regular massages and holidays in the Hamptons) and a ‘bigger pool to select a mate from’ – presumably given the time taken to obtain that attractive wealth and status to offer potential mates we are talking about a ‘trade up’, younger model here after abandoning the partner who

stood by you as you worked all hours discovering tiny loopholes on the taxation system.

Of course the world doesn’t owe you joy, or a comfortable guaranteed living practising a self-indulgent hobby. But this crowd doesn’t look like they are looking for handouts or for someone

to lay it all out for them. So what about the person there whose passion might be to improve educational outcomes in African schools through better water, sanitation, energy supply and nutrition? Or to address the climate and pollution crisis through greater energy efficiency

and reduced waste? These ‘naive dreamers’ tend to create their own roles, expand the range of possible jobs, employ people and improve the world. Not of course that all paths need be so exceptional to be joyous and rewarding….

He finally trivialises and dismisses following your passion (interests) through the example of ‘being a DJ’ at the weekend, as if all ‘passions’ must be petty indulgences, pleasures, hobbies rather than potentially intellectually challenging and rigorous areas of interest,

application, learning and acquired knowledge… like perhaps coding, writing, painting or environmental work… (and of course…. perhaps he doesn’t know but Jay-Z is one of the greatest musicians, writers, producers and successful businessmen of the recent past and to compare him

to a weekend knob twiddling ‘DJ’ is in itself of course pretty rude). Thus passions are equated with childish things to be put away, so that like Prince Hal becoming King Henry, you must willingly abandon them in acceptance of the responsibilities of a productive adulthood.

The final flimsy straw man is that, in contrast to the assumed rapacious and insatiable demand of the tax-lawyer world for ever more human capital which thereby produces untold opportunity for challenging and remunerative careers, careers based on following your interest we are

told have room only for one supreme talent and, if you aren’t that one supreme talent you should put aside your dreams. In a final attempt at a rhetorical flourish to match “Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy” (I mean be original man…) we are told to assume we are not that one

exceptional person… but the musical and creative industries, if music is your passion, have untold numbers of varied, rewarding, challenging jobs in writing, performance, production… it simply isn’t true that unless you are exceptional or uniquely gifted following a path based

on what interests and stimulates you means scratching around for a living without prospect of reward, satisfaction and sustenance.

Billions of years of evolution have conspired in this near infinite expanse of space to give you a life that is insignificantly brief,

sometimes brutal and likely of almost no historical import – but it is your life and the only one that you have. That itself is a source of incredible wonder and is precious beyond measure – and far too important to dedicate to the approval of others, to rewards that

really don’t matter and to squander most of learning to love something that is barren and morally reprehensible.