We’ve all either given or received the career advice: “Follow your dreams.”  “Do what you love.”  “Love what you do.”

Recently, there have been an increasing number of counterarguments making the case that if we were all going to “do what we love,” we’d starve doing it.

I came across a 2006 post by Paul Graham: “How To Do What You Love” that offers what may be the best thought-leadership on the subject that I have read.

Graham is an essayist, programmer, and investor. In 1995, he co-developed the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.  Graham’s blog is one of the most followed in the blogosphere.

It is an essay (longish for those of us with…

It is the dim haze of mystery that adds enchantment to pursuit.

– Antoine Rivarol

Beautiful shot and post-processing by

– Tejasvi Batria

“Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely.” (Lord Acton)

Power comes in many different forms.  Executive position, influence, knowledge, ability, pedigree, wealth.  Whatever your station in life, you exercise varying degrees of power.

Some of us are single and are empowered to direct our own lives and influence the people around us.  Some have positions in the marketplace carrying significant executive weight and accountability.  Others of us are born into privilege and responsibility, a greater degree of power carrying commensurate benefits or consequences depending on its stewardship.  One can’t help thinking about the Kennedy’s and the Rockefellers.  Or the House of Windsor.

I’ve noticed, after nearly five decades of living, that power, when given—as in, say, a sizeable job promotion—tends to bring out what is hidden in the heart of the one to whom it is delegated.

For some, it brings into relief the most noble qualities—service, care, efficiency…