Endeavor to seek out true passion in life

Do you ever feel like you live life doing things just.because?

No strong impetuous drives your actions, but you go through with them anyways for the sake of your career track, or because your parents tell you to, or maybe because your friends think it's cool or it seems like the right thing to do? Perhaps you have a vague interest, are good at it and there's nothing stopping you from doing it. So why not.right?

I bring up these questions not because I think it is wrong to go through life this way; there isn't anything harmful about it. But because I've come to realize that life can be so much more.

Over the holiday break, I was fortunate enough to travel to the third world. A world in which people hold so few material possessions, but who have such a richness of heart.

I won't digress more into my travels, but I will tell you that the trip resulted in my realization of the importance of living life with heart, with passion.

For a life lived without passion, without real joy, is a life that is not lived to its full potential. And no material object can bring you joy as pure as the relationships you hold with the people around you.

Unfortunately, Tech has the uncanny effect on those who enter to render us into hard-headed rational beings. (Naturally, this is more true for engineering and science majors.) Perhaps this effect is caused by the stress of the courses, or the atmosphere of apathy, but I think that it is also an effect, or a limit of our education.

A technical education produces calculating beings who can balance equations and problem-solve. But we aren't educated in how to make decisions that involve the heart as well as the head.

As a friend told me this week, he doesn't feel like he's learned to really think for himself, nor does he feel like he's gained life experience during his time here.

There are those who would argue that college is about getting an education, gaining knowledge. Period. But our college years are some of the most formative years of our lives.

It is during this time that we are supposed to transition from minors to adults, to become contributing members of society. We leave college to become not only scientists, engineers, managers or doctors, but also wives, husbands and maybe eventually mothers and fathers. And we should strive to enter into professions in which we feel fulfilled , and in which we feel like we can truly make a mark on the world, whether big or small.

The world we face will be far more complex than the relatively sheltered life we lead as college student. We will come to crossroads in our lives in which logic and reason alone cannot guide us to the correct path, but rather it will be our hearts and passions that will show the way.

I must admit it is nearly impossible to explore the deeper intricacies of life when learning about thermodynamics.

This is why Tech students need to strive harder than most to expose ourselves to "real life" in order to figure out our true passions while we can still enjoy the relative freedom of being college students without ties to a steady job, a mortgage, family and other such concerns of "adult life."

And there are many opportunities available to us. Many advocate traveling as a way to "find yourself," but I think it's more important to step out of your comfort zone and look at life through different lens; you needn't necessarily go anywhere.

But wherever you go and whatever you do to step out of that comfort zone, it is important to be open to the experience.

What's the point of making taking the effort to step out of your comfort zone if you maintain the same defenses you normally do? You would not absorb as much from the experience.