Do What You Love, They Said

There is a sentence that a whole generation was handed, usually at about eighteen, usually by somebody who meant well.

Do what you love and you will never work a day in your life.

Picture the woman who received it. She was told it at school. It was on a poster in a corridor. Somebody said it at her graduation, and everybody clapped, and she believed it completely.

She is now thirty six and works in claims administration.

She does not love it. She has never loved it. She spent her twenties trying about four different things, on the assumption that the thing was out there and she had not located it, and by about thirty one she stopped looking.

And here is what she did with the sentence when it did not work, and it is the reason this article exists.

She did not conclude that the sentence was wrong. She concluded that she was.

That is what a slogan does when it is handed to somebody as though it were wisdom. It cannot fail, because it does not make a claim that can be tested. So when a life does not match it, the life is what gets marked down.

She has been walking around for five years with a quiet verdict about herself that came off a poster in a corridor, and she has never once turned it over and looked at where it came from.

The man who tried everything

There is a book in the Bible written by somebody who had the means to test the do what you love proposition properly, and who did.

He built houses. He planted vineyards and gardens and orchards. He made pools. He had singers and musicians and every pleasure available to a person in that world, and he says plainly that he withheld nothing from himself.

And here is his verdict on all of it.

Then I looked on all the works that my hands had wrought, and on the labour that I had laboured to do: and, behold, all was vanity and vexation of spirit, and there was no profit under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 2:11, King James Version)

He did what he loved. He did it at a scale nobody reading this could approach. And it did not produce what the slogan promises.

You are not the one who failed the experiment, and Ecclesiastes 2 has a man with unlimited means testing that proposition and reporting back (Ecclesiastes 2:11), and the Holy Spirit is the one who kept that report in the book so that nobody would have to run it again.

And then, having tested it, he arrives somewhere, and where he arrives is startlingly ordinary.

There is nothing better for a man, than that he should eat and drink, and that he should make his soul enjoy good in his labour. This also I saw, that it was from the hand of God. (Ecclesiastes 2:24)

Eat, drink, and find good in your labor.

That is the conclusion of a man who tried every alternative available to a king. Not find your passion. Not locate the thing you were made for. Eat, drink, and let your soul find good in the work of your hands.

You have been given a conclusion rather than a slogan, and Ecclesiastes 2:24 says there is nothing better after a man has tried everything else (Ecclesiastes 2:24), and the Spirit of God is the one who makes an ordinary conclusion land as relief rather than as a downgrade.

Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest

There is a verse later in the same book that says where the joy actually goes, and it is not into the job.

Live joyfully with the wife whom thou lovest all the days of the life of thy vanity, which he hath given thee under the sun, all the days of thy vanity: for that is thy portion in this life, and in thy labour which thou takest under the sun. (Ecclesiastes 9:9)

That is thy portion in this life, and in thy labor.

The portion is not located in the work. It is located in a person, and in the days, and the labor is where it is spent rather than where it is found.

Which is the exact inversion of the sentence on the poster. The poster says find the work you love and everything follows. The book says love the people, enjoy the days, and let the work be the labor those days are spent inside.

You have a portion located in your days rather than in your occupation, and Ecclesiastes 9 puts it in the living joyfully rather than in the work (Ecclesiastes 9:9), and it is the Holy Spirit who makes that a place a person can actually stand.

You have not missed the thing you were made for, and Ecclesiastes 2:11 has a man who tried every version of it reporting that it did not deliver (Ecclesiastes 2:11), and the Spirit of God is the one who removes a verdict that came off a corridor wall.

What this is not

Let me be plain, because this could be heard as cynical and it is not.

This is not saying people who love their work are lying or deluded. Some genuinely do and it is a good thing.

It is also not saying she should stop looking for better work. She might find some, and there is nothing here telling her to stay.

And it is not saying that the people who said it to her were fools. They were repeating something they believed and they meant her well.

And plainly: if the verdict has become the kind of weight that touches everything, if you cannot get out of bed, or if some part of you wants it all to stop, that is bigger than a slogan. Call or text the 988 crisis line, and say the true version out loud to a doctor or a counselor or a pastor you trust. Getting help is not a failure.

You are not being told to expect nothing, and Ecclesiastes 2:24 offers something specific rather than taking anything away (Ecclesiastes 2:24), and the Holy Spirit is the one who can dismantle a slogan without dismantling anybody's hope.