Passion is not Enough

Photo Credit: Ian Schneider via Unsplash.com

I’m writing these words at 4AM here in Montreal, an hour that seems simultaneously too late and too early. The reason I’m wide awake in these wee hours of the morning is a combination of excitement, anticipation and even a little tension. Some profound and, it must be said, exciting things have occurred over the last couple of days, with possibly even more to come in the days to follow. I think I’m feeling the need to pause for a moment and get my bearings, hence my nocturnal contemplations.

If you’re like most people, you have dreams and desires, some obvious, some so secret and personal they may never see the light of day. Interestingly, while we often ask each other questions such as “What do you want?” or “What are your goals?” we rarely ask the seemingly obvious follow-on question, “What are you willing to do to get it?” Not only do we not ask, but we often don’t even consider our own answer to that question.

It’s easy to be trite in these situations and say, “I’d be willing to do anything,” oblivious as to how meaningless that truly is. Using open-ended indefinite pronouns like ‘anything’ indicates that you haven’t really thought about your motivations at all. Think about it: The word anything in the previous example could be replaced with the following:

“I’d be willing to drink paint thinner.”
“I’d be willing to run naked through the UN headquarters.”
“I’d be willing to listen to Nickelback.”
“I’d be willing to kill someone.”

Obviously these are absurd and even disturbing examples (I mean… Nickelback? That’s scary.) but they fit within the parameters of the statement. No, if your motivations for achieving a dream are that thin, then I fear it will remain just that – a dream.

We’re often told that in goal setting, if we discover the why, the how will take care of itself. This is largely true. As I showed above, your passion and motivation for achieving a dream must be powerful enough to keep you going over the long term. However, I feel as if there’s something missing from this equation.

Why can sometimes be a difficult question to answer. “Because I really want it” is not enough, and when you drill down with multiple whys, it can feel like you’re staring into the Mandelbrot set, endlessly descending into infinity. Hardly useful if you’re trying to decide, for example, whether or not to take a job offer in a far off place.

I’ve discovered – purely by accident I admit – an interesting method for boosting your ‘why,’ and it’s the question I mentioned a little earlier: “What are you willing to do to achieve your goal?”

This question, or its alternate form, “What are you willing to sacrifice to achieve your goal?” can be extremely useful in determining the strength of your ‘why.’ Allow me to provide a real world example, based on something happening to me right now.

Very shortly I may be offered the opportunity to fulfill a dream I have worked toward for over ten years. Longtime readers of mine will know that I have been attempting to get to British Columbia on the west coast of Canada for a very long time. I’ve been held back mostly due to my inability to find employment. While nothing is carved in stone, there is a strong possibility that I may have the opportunity to finally realize my dream.

While this is certainly a positive thing – indeed the excitement is part of the reason I began writing this essay at 4AM – it comes with some built-in challenges, most of them financial. At the moment, I cannot afford to get to B.C., much less find a place to stay. I simply don’t have the resources to do so.  The dream, it would seem, has once again been ended.

But not so fast. This is my dream, my goal if you prefer. I fact, it’s THE goal, the reason I’ve been living out of a single duffle bag for an insanely long period of time. It’s a promise I made to someone a decade ago. After so many false starts, mistakes, and obstacles, how can I allow this last obstacle stop me when I’m so close?

This is where my question comes in. Not my why. I already know that. Now it’s time to get serious. What am I willing to do to make this work? What am I willing to sacrifice to make this happen?

When I asked myself those questions, and answered with total, heart-wrenching honesty, the path became clear and the stress gave way to determination. What were my answers?

• Getting to British Columbia: I’ll get there using what few funds I have left. I’ll hitchhike the rest of the way, or walk if necessary. (Yes, I’m dead serious.)
• Finding a place to stay temporarily: I’ll camp out in the wilderness until my first paycheque comes in, or stay in a hostel if I have any cash left.

Now these answers might sound extreme, but considering such options shows just how seriously I take this. Having goals and dreams is great. Having solid reasons why is even better. However pursuing a dream inevitably involves dealing with obstacles, some of them quite major, even apparently insurmountable. In order to get you through those dark times – to achieve your dreams despite the entire universe seemingly conspiring against you – you need more than positive thoughts. Even passion will only take you so far. You need the answer to a simple question:

“How badly do you want it?”

Teaching Kids to Code a Better Future

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Recently the government of British Columbia introduced new plans that would introduce coding to school curricula, from Kindergarten to Grade 12.

The new coding curriculum will be introduced across all grades over three years, featuring new standards in mathematics and sciences and a new ‘applied design, skills and technologies’ (ADST) component to improve students’ abilities to solve problems and think creatively.

Back when I was in school (a time when they were still working the bugs out of ‘the wheel’ and Donald Trump’s hair was its original colour: green) the only coding we knew about was the secret language you used to write messages back and forth to your friends. Such was our prowess at cryptography, the codebreakers at Bletchley Park would have had a devil of a time deciphering our pithy correspondences, such as: “Dave is a idiot. Pass it on.” But… I digress.

There are a couple of points to be made here I think. First of all, this is an obvious attempt to address a direct shortage of technology workers in Canada, especially in light of the collapse of the oil industry. Many (myself included) see this as a bit of a desperation move, trying to make up for years of obsessing over oil and gas, a non-sustainable, and as we’ve seen, entirely unstable source of economic growth.

Secondly, there will be those will decry this initiative as another example of the diminishing of the Humanities in favour of yet more STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics)-related subjects. I admit, I’ve always been of the opinion that promoting STEM subjects at the cost of the Arts and Humanities is an egregious mistake that has lead to many of our greatest social problems, possibly even Nickelback. Both areas should be taught with equal weight, as it requires both the technical knowledge of the STEM subjects AND the wisdom and creativity of the Humanities to be a truly prosperous and valuable member of a modern society.

Indeed, one could argue (convincingly I believe) that this STEM-bias (and the arrogance that invariably goes with it) has led to our current financial situation.

In any event, I think this move by the B.C. government, whatever its motives, is a good thing overall. I’m not for a moment suggesting that all kids should be software developers, nor indeed will many of them want to be. However coding, and the logic and thought process that goes into technology has become, for better or worse, a fundamental skill that must be possessed in order to succeed in this society. It’s becoming a kind of 21st century literacy, as critical to daily life as the ability to read, write, or count.

“Hang on a minute,” I hear you cry in what looks suspiciously like italics. “What about those children who want to be writers, filmmakers, artists, psychologists and the like. Why do they need to learn how to code? Surely such training would be wasted on them.”

Not necessarily. Many of the social issues we run into today are born from ignorance. Consider this somewhat simplistic example. If you understood how your car worked – the mechanics, the electronics, etc. – getting it repaired would be a far less scary proposition (and possibly less costly). I’m not suggesting that we all need to be mechanics, any more than everyone needs to be a computer programmer, but understanding the basic principles behind the objects and devices we use every day is empowering. The fact that many of us still stare at our mobile phones with an expression of “Oooo… magic talking light box!” is worrying in the extreme. Especially when the device is, in fact, off.

Ignorance, and it’s far more lethal cousin willful ignorance, leads to problems far beyond not knowing how your car works and getting ripped off on a repair you didn’t need. Ignorance is a breeding ground for fear, which is the perfect environment for hate to spring.

It may seem like a stretch to connect all these things – coding in schools, ignorance of technology, fear-based hate – but they are connected by a single idea: the lack of knowledge.

It’s impossible to make intelligent, informed decisions about our world without knowledge. Whether that be an understanding of the technologies we create, or the people we interact with each day, many of the decisions we now make are based on very little real knowledge. Take a good look around at some of our biggest social problems and it’s easy to see how knowledge (and its dance partner understanding) could possibly have alleviated or at least lessened the damage done.

If our schools truly are the training ground for the next generation, then we need to do a better job of arming them with the knowledge and understanding they’ll need to make better decisions. Who knows? They might even be able to fix some of the messes we’ve made.