Passion as Privilege

Sunday morning, October 26th. Reading another commencement speech telling graduates to follow their passion, delivered by someone whose parents paid for their experimental twenties.

The Passion Gospel

The modern career advice canon has a clear message: follow your passion.

Don't settle for work that merely pays the bills. Don't choose stability over meaning. Don't let practical considerations override what you love. Life is too short to do work you don't care about. The people who do great work are the people who love what they do.

Find your passion first, the advice goes, and the rest will follow. Success comes to those who pursue what they love rather than what pays. Money follows passion. Fulfillment matters more than compensation. Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life.

This advice appears everywhere: commencement speeches, career books, motivational posts, founder origin stories. It's presented as universal wisdom—the key to both happiness and success that works for everyone willing to be brave enough to follow it.

Thesis: The "follow your passion" narrative is primarily privilege talking. It's advice that only works for people who already have safety nets, resources, and options. For most people, passion isn't the foundation for good work—it's a luxury that comes after you've solved for survival, stability, and basic competence.

Telling everyone to follow their passion isn't wisdom. It's a class marker disguised as advice, and following it without acknowledging its prerequisites is a recipe for failure.

What Passion-First Advice Assumes

The follow-your-passion narrative rests on several unstated assumptions that are true for some people and completely false for others.

Assumption 1: You Have the Resources to Explore

Following your passion requires time and money to figure out what your passion even is. It requires the ability to try things, make mistakes, pivot without penalty, and explore until something clicks.

The person who can follow their passion typically has a safety net. Parents who can support them if things don't work out. Savings that let them take unpaid internships or low-paying early-career roles in "passion" fields. Housing security that means they can take risks without becoming homeless. Healthcare that doesn't depend on keeping a stable job.

They can spend their early twenties "finding themselves." They can take the low-paid arts job instead of the high-paid corporate job. They can turn down stability for meaning. They can quit when something isn't fulfilling and try something else. The downside of following passion is capped by their safety net.

The person who can't follow their passion has bills they must pay, dependents who rely on them, debt that demands service, no safety net if things go wrong. They need income now, not someday. They need healthcare now. They need housing security now.

They can't spend years exploring. They can't take unpaid internships. They can't turn down stable income for meaningful work. They can't quit without another job lined up. Their downside isn't capped—it's catastrophic.

The passion-first advice pretends this difference doesn't exist. It treats "follow your passion" as universally applicable wisdom rather than advice that only works if you have resources to burn while figuring things out.

Assumption 2: Your Passion Is Marketable

Following your passion assumes your passion happens to be something people will pay for—or at least that you can afford to pursue passion whether it pays or not.

Some passions are conveniently profitable. You're passionate about software, consulting, finance, law, medicine—fields where passion and income naturally align. You can follow your passion and make good money doing it. How convenient.

Other passions are structurally low-paid. You're passionate about poetry, social work, teaching, most arts, most pure research. These fields are systematically undercompensated relative to the value they provide. Following your passion means accepting low pay, often precarious employment, and financial stress.

Still other passions have no market at all. You're passionate about things that simply don't pay: certain types of research, experimental art, community organizing, caring for others. Following these passions requires either independent wealth or sacrificing huge amounts of time and energy to paid work you don't care about so you can do what you're passionate about on the side.

The passion-first advice ignores this reality. It pretends passion naturally leads to prosperity, when for many passions it leads directly to poverty unless you have other resources.

When people with profitable passions tell people with unprofitable passions to "just follow your passion," they're not sharing wisdom—they're revealing they don't understand how much of their success came from having the right passion, not just following it.

Assumption 3: You Can Afford to Delay Returns

Following your passion typically means accepting lower pay, uncertain prospects, and delayed success while you build expertise and opportunity in your passion field.

The person who can afford to delay returns doesn't have pressing financial obligations. They don't need to pay off student debt aggressively. They don't support family members. They don't have children depending on their income. They can live cheaply while building their passion career. They can work multiple side gigs while pursuing their art. They have time to become good enough that their passion becomes profitable.

The person who can't afford to delay returns needs money now. Student debt compounds. Family needs support. Children need stability. Delaying returns isn't just uncomfortable—it's impossible. By the time their passion might pay off, they've already been foreclosed on, defaulted on loans, or burned out from working three jobs.

The passion advice pretends everyone has equal time horizons. In reality, time horizon is one of the clearest markers of class. The person who can wait five years for their passion to pay off is playing a different game than the person who needs income next month.

Assumption 4: Passion Is Stable and Singular

The passion narrative assumes you have one clear passion that you discover and pursue. Once found, this passion remains stable and guides your career.

For some people—disproportionately from stable backgrounds—this is true. They had resources to explore, found their thing early, developed expertise, and built careers around stable, enduring interests. Their passion story is clean and linear.

For many people, passion is unstable, multiple, or absent. Interests change. What fascinates you at 20 bores you at 30. You're passionate about multiple incompatible things. You're not passionate about anything in particular—you're competent at several things but not driven by burning interest in any of them.

The follow-your-passion advice treats this as a defect—you haven't found your "real" passion yet, you need to look harder. But often there's nothing to find. Not everyone has a single stable passion. The people who do are fortunate, but they're not more authentic or self-aware—they're just lucky in their psychological makeup and circumstances.

Telling someone to follow their nonexistent singular passion isn't helpful. It's gaslighting them about their own experience.

Passion as Post-Hoc Rationalization

Many people who preach passion-first didn't actually follow passion first. They developed passion through competence and success.

The passion origin story: "I always loved computers. Even as a child I was obsessed. I followed my passion into software engineering and built a career I love."

The actual history: You had access to computers early (already marking privilege). You happened to be good at them. Being good at something is enjoyable, so you spent more time on it. More time developed more skill. More skill led to recognition and opportunities. Opportunities led to income and success. Success and income made the field feel like "your passion."

Your passion didn't cause your success—your success caused your passion. You developed passion for the thing you were good at and that worked out well. Then you retroactively tell the story as if passion came first.

This is incredibly common. People become passionate about things they're good at, that people value, that provide good lives. Then they tell follow-your-passion stories as if the passion preceded the competence and success.

The person whose random talent happened to be profitable develops passion for it and attributes their success to following passion. The person whose random talent wasn't profitable doesn't develop the same passion, or develops passion but doesn't achieve success, and gets blamed for "not being passionate enough" or "following the wrong passion."

The passion-first narrative reverses causality. For many successful people, competence and opportunity came first. Passion developed as a result of success, not as its cause. But the reversed story is more inspiring and more flattering—"I succeeded because I followed my passion" sounds better than "I developed passion for the thing I got good at that also happened to pay well."

What Works Better Than Passion

If following passion is class-marked advice that doesn't work for most people, what should people do instead?

Start with Competence, Not Passion

Instead of asking "what am I passionate about?", ask "what can I become good at that people value?"

This is less inspiring but more useful. Developing competence in a valued skill gives you options. Options give you stability. Stability gives you breathing room. Breathing room lets you explore interests. Some of those interests might develop into passion.

The competence-first path: Pick something you can tolerate that has market value. Develop real skill. Build financial stability. Use that stability as a platform for exploration. Develop passion through competence and security, not in spite of their absence.

This isn't "selling out." It's recognizing that passion is often an effect of security and competence, not their prerequisite.

Build Options, Not Commitment

Instead of committing to your one passion, build a career that gives you options to explore interests as they develop.

Passion-first says: Figure out your passion, commit to it completely, don't be distracted by practical considerations.

Options-first says: Develop skills that are valued in multiple contexts. Build financial buffer. Create career stability that lets you pivot. Stay general longer so you can specialize toward emerging interests rather than committing to static passion.

Many people who followed passion early locked themselves into fields before knowing if their passion would be stable or marketable. Many people who built options first could follow emerging interests from a position of security rather than desperation.

Use Stability to Buy Exploration

Instead of sacrificing stability for passion, use stability to afford exploration.

The passion narrative treats stable work and passionate work as opposites. You either follow your passion or settle for soul-crushing stability. You either do what you love or sell out.

In reality, stable work often enables passionate work. The job that pays well funds the hobby that might become passion. The secure position gives you mental space to explore interests. The good income lets you take courses, develop skills, or work on projects you care about.

The person with a stable tech job who writes poetry on weekends has more options than the person who quit their stable job to write poetry full-time and now works three gigs to survive. The first person can actually explore their passion. The second person is grinding to avoid homelessness.

Stability isn't the opposite of passion—it's often the prerequisite for it.

Develop Passion Through Mastery

Instead of finding your passion first, develop passion by getting good at valuable things.

This flips the passion narrative. Instead of passion → effort → mastery → success, the actual path is often effort → competence → mastery → passion → success.

Getting good at something is intrinsically rewarding. The person who develops real expertise in almost anything develops appreciation for it. The craft becomes interesting. The depth reveals itself. What started as just a job becomes engaging.

Not always. Some things stay boring no matter how good you get. But often, the path to passion runs through mastery, not the other way around. You don't need to start with passion. You need to start with willingness to develop competence. Passion develops as you master something valuable.

The Class Markers in Passion Advice

The follow-your-passion narrative is full of class markers that are invisible to people from privileged backgrounds and obvious to everyone else.

"Take time to find yourself." Translation: I had years where someone else paid for my exploration.

"Don't let money be the deciding factor." Translation: I never had to choose between passion and survival.

"Do what you love and success will follow." Translation: I happened to love something profitable and had the resources to pursue it until it paid off.

"I followed my passion and never worked a day." Translation: I had the luxury of choosing work I enjoy and enough financial security that I never experienced my passion as labor.

"You have to be willing to sacrifice for your passion." Translation: I could afford to sacrifice income and stability because I had safety nets.

These statements aren't malicious. The people saying them genuinely believe they're sharing universal wisdom. But they're actually describing strategies that only work from positions of privilege, then universalizing them as if they work for everyone.

The result is that privileged people who followed passion and succeeded attribute their success to their bravery and passion. Less privileged people who can't follow passion get framed as timid, risk-averse, not passionate enough—when actually they're just operating under constraints that the passion-advocates don't acknowledge or remember.

The Sunday Reality

Here's what the passion-first advocates don't tell you:

Most people develop passion for what they're good at, not the other way around. Competence creates interest. Mastery creates engagement. Success creates enthusiasm. The causality runs from achievement to passion much more often than from passion to achievement.

Passion advice works great if you already have resources and options. If you have safety nets, if your interests happen to be marketable, if you can afford years of exploration and delayed returns—then sure, follow your passion. You're in a position where that strategy can work.

For everyone else, follow-your-passion is a trap. It tells you to sacrifice stability for uncertain returns, to prioritize feelings over functionality, to commit to interests before you know if they're viable. It blames you when this doesn't work out—you weren't passionate enough, you picked the wrong passion, you gave up too soon.

What actually works for most people: Develop competence in something valuable. Build stability. Use stability as platform for exploration. Let passion develop through mastery and security rather than forcing it to precede them.

The uncomfortable truth: The people who preach passion first usually didn't actually follow it themselves. They developed passion for things they were good at that happened to pay well. Then they retroactively framed their success as the result of following passion, not as the result of fortunate circumstances plus competence plus passion that developed along the way.

Or they had the resources to explore until they found a marketable passion. They could afford to follow passion because failure was survivable. Then they attribute their success to passion rather than to the resources that made following passion safe.

What To Do Instead

If you have resources—family support, savings, no dependents, marketable interests: Sure, follow your passion. You're in a position where that strategy can work. But recognize it as a privilege-enabled strategy, not as universal wisdom.

If you don't have those resources: Start with competence, not passion. Find something you can tolerate that people value. Get good at it. Build stability. Use stability to explore interests. Let passion develop from security and mastery rather than forcing it to precede them.

If you're giving advice: Stop universalizing passion-first. It's not universal wisdom—it's context-dependent strategy that works for some people in some situations. Acknowledge the prerequisites. Admit the luck. Share the actual path that worked—which usually includes way more contingency and privilege than the "I followed my passion" story suggests.

If you're evaluating advice: Ask whether the advice-giver had resources you don't have. Ask whether their passion happened to be marketable when yours isn't. Ask whether they're retroactively framing success as passion-driven when actually competence and opportunity came first.

Most importantly: Don't feel defective if passion-first doesn't work for you. It doesn't work for most people in most situations. The people for whom it works are fortunate in their circumstances, psychology, and luck—not more authentic, more brave, or more committed to their dreams.

You don't need to follow your passion. You need to develop competence that gives you options. Passion—if it comes at all—usually follows security and mastery, not the other way around.

The privileged can afford to follow passion and see what happens. Everyone else needs to build the foundation first. That's not selling out. That's reality. The people who tell you otherwise are revealing their privilege more than their wisdom.

Passion as privilege: We tell people to follow their passion as if passion is foundation for good work. But passion is often luxury of people who already have stability, resources, options. Thesis: "follow your passion" narrative is privilege talking—advice only working for people with safety nets, resources, options. For most people, passion isn't foundation—it's luxury coming after survival, stability, basic competence. Unstated assumptions: (1) You have resources to explore—time and money to try things, make mistakes, pivot. Need safety nets, savings, housing security, healthcare not tied to employment. Can't work without bills to pay, dependents, debt, no safety net; (2) Your passion is marketable—some passions profitable (tech, consulting, finance), others structurally low-paid (teaching, arts, social work), others have no market at all. Pretends passion naturally leads to prosperity; (3) You can afford to delay returns—person who can afford delay doesn't have pressing obligations, debt, dependents. Person who can't needs money now. Time horizon is class marker; (4) Passion is stable and singular—assumes one clear passion you discover and pursue. For many, passion is unstable, multiple, or absent. Not defect—just different psychology and circumstances. Passion as post-hoc rationalization: many who preach passion-first didn't follow it. Developed passion through competence and success. Success caused passion, not other way around. Passion-first narrative reverses causality. What works better: start with competence not passion (what can I become good at that people value?), build options not commitment (develop valued skills in multiple contexts), use stability to buy exploration (stable work enables passionate work), develop passion through mastery (effort → competence → mastery → passion → success). Class markers: "take time to find yourself" (had years paid for), "don't let money decide" (never chose between passion and survival), "do what you love and success follows" (loved something profitable), "never worked a day" (luxury of choosing enjoyable work). Most people develop passion for what they're good at, not other way around. Competence creates interest. Success creates enthusiasm. Passion advice works if you have resources. For everyone else it's trap. What works: develop competence in something valuable, build stability, use stability for exploration, let passion develop through mastery and security. People who preach passion first usually didn't follow it themselves or had resources making following passion safe. Don't feel defective if passion-first doesn't work. It doesn't work for most people in most situations. You don't need to follow passion—need to develop competence giving you options. Passion usually follows security and mastery, not other way around.