Is It Naive to 'Do What You Love' for a Living?

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"Be realistic. You have to survive."

This is the advice we've inherited, the one we repeat to ourselves when passion stirs, the one we'll likely pass to our children if we're not careful. It sounds like wisdom. It's actually fear dressed in practicality.

The belief underlying this is that survival and fulfillment are incompatible. You must choose between paying bills and doing meaningful work. Passion is a luxury. The rest of us trade our hours for money in work that slowly drains us, and this is just how things are.

But what if this entire framework is a story we've been told so many times we've mistaken it for truth?

The Scarcity We've Normalized

We've been taught that opportunities are scarce, that most people must settle, and that "that's just how the world works." But these aren't objective facts—they're beliefs that become self-fulfilling. When we believe we can't make money doing what we love, we don't try. When we teach children that passion and practicality are opposed, they internalize that split and spend their lives feeling torn.

Scarcity thinking tells us there aren't enough good opportunities to go around, that only lucky people get to do meaningful work, and that dreams don't pay bills. And when we operate from scarcity, we create scarcity. We don't look for possibilities because we've already decided they don't exist.

What We're Actually Teaching Our Children

When we tell children to "be realistic" about their dreams, we're not protecting them—we're projecting our limitations onto their future.

We're teaching them their passions aren't valuable enough to build a life around. That financial security requires sacrificing what matters. That work is something to endure, not something that energizes that they should make decisions from fear rather than possibility.

What if instead we said: "Find what you value, then get creative about building a life around it. It won't be easy. You'll face challenges. But those challenges are worth facing when you're working toward something meaningful."

This isn't naive—it's the only sustainable path forward.

The False Binary

We've created a choice that doesn't actually exist: pursue your passion and struggle, or choose practical work and resign yourself to unfulfillment. This ignores the vast middle ground where most people live fulfilling, sustainable work lives.

Doing what you love doesn't mean only doing the enjoyable parts while ignoring everything else. It doesn't mean it will be easy or that money appears without a and strategy. It means building a life around your core values and being willing to do the less glamorous work required to sustain it.

The photographer still edits, markets, and manages clients. The writer still revises, pitches, faces rejection. The teacher still navigates bureaucracy and difficult parents. But here's the difference: when you're working toward something aligned with your values, those challenges don't deplete you the same way. You're willing to do the hard parts because they're in service of something that matters.

The Realistic View

Pursuing work you love isn't easy. It requires creativity to translate passion into value others will pay for. It requires patience—most people don't immediately replace their income doing what they love. It requires tolerance for uncertainty, willingness to learn business skills, and resilience through failure.

You'll face trade-offs. You might earn less initially. You might work longer hours. You'll encounter judgment from people who think you're being impractical.

But pretending that unfulfilling work with a steady paycheck is safer is its own delusion. That path has costs, too: burnout, resentment, health issues, the feeling that life is passing while you wait for retirement to finally live.

The work you love doesn't eliminate challenge—it contextualizes it. The difficulties become part of the path rather than evidence you're on the wrong one.

What It Actually Looks Like

It's not waking up excited every day with no frustrations. It's the massage therapist who loves helping people heal but also manages schedules, maintains a space, and protects their own body from burnout. The software developer who loves problem-solving but tolerates meetings and bureaucracy because the core work still feeds them. The artist who loves creating but also runs a business, manages social media, and accepts that not every piece resonates—yet couldn't imagine doing anything else.

The massage therapist has back pain some days. The developer gets frustrated with stakeholders. The artist experiences rejection. But they're willing to face these things because the alternative—spending their one life doing work that means nothing to them—is worse.

The Real Choice

You don't need permission to pursue work that matters to you, but if you're waiting for it: it's not naive to want work aligned with your values. It's not selfish to refuse to spend most of your waking life doing something that deadens your spirit. It's not impractical to believe you can support yourself while doing what you value.

What's actually impractical is spending decades in work that erodes your health and spirit, calling it responsible while your life passes by.

The world doesn't need more people resigned to unfulfilling work. It needs people willing to get creative about building lives around what they value, even when it's difficult. It needs people modeling for children that meaningful work is possible—not because it's easy, but because it's worth the effort.

The choice isn't between passion and survival. It's between living from scarcity or living from possibility. Both involve challenge. Only one involves building a life you actually want to be living.

Start by asking: What do I value? What work would I do even when it's hard because it matters to me? What would I need to learn to make that viable?

Then take one step. And another. Not from naive optimism that it will be effortless, but from grounded determination that it's worth pursuing anyway.

Because the alternative—a life spent waiting for permission to do what matters—is the only truly naive choice.

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