Writing, Among Other Things

What is Your Profession?

300 is a nice movie. Admittedly, the movie is mostly blood, gore, screams and half naked men with great abs, yet it is a great movie. The quality of the movie, however, is not what this post is about. This post is about something I realised as I was watching the movie.

In one scene, King Leonidas, and his 300 men, meet a group of Arcadians, led by Daxos. Daxos is dismayed at seeing only 300 men, and he tells Leonidas that he was expecting the number of Spartans to be at least as much as the Arcadians. At that Leonidas asks three Arcadians what their profession was, and the answers he gets are potter, sculptor, and blacksmith respectively.

Spartans, of course, were soldiers by profession, each and every one of them. That was exactly what made Spartans a formidable fighting force.

The lesson to be learnt here is simple.

If you want  to be good at something, treat it as if it is your profession. There might be circumstances beyond your control that might be forcing you to do something else for the moment – to earn your daily bread, let’s say. But, do not let that distract you from doing what you were “born to do”.

Treating something like a profession entails commitment, practise, training and self-confidence.

You need to be committed to your thing because that is the only way that you can continue to do the thing even if you are not getting paid for it. If your means of livelihood is something other than what you want to be, with time, the desire to do the thing you want to do might just fade Away. Your daily job might leave you with “too little time” to pursue your dreams. Work, as they say, has the ability to expand into the time available.

If you want to be good at anything at all you must keep doing it, till it comes to you naturally. So, the need for practice hardly needs to be underlined.

Self confidence is important because it is the only thing that will help you take the plunge when the time comes. Most people today seem tired of their daily jobs, but they keep on doing what they do because they worry about losing whatever it is that they have. A litttle voice tries to remind them about other, better, things they should be doing, but this voice is easily stifled. Self confidence can amplify this voice and help you leave your boring job, and do what you have always wanted to do.

So, What is your profession?

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3 Comments

  1. nandini

    very well said..this is indeed a question we should all ask ourselves..self satisfaction is something that cannot be achieved until and unless you love what you do..if you love something go for it..give your 100%..there should be no regrets later to lament on..and the feeling of “if..i could’ve done that”..just follow your heart and keep faith in yourself and your decision..and things will fall into place.
    i’m really happy to read this..its beautifully written and the comparison and relation with 300 is too awesome..great work…and very inspiring 🙂

  2. adee

    hmmm

    well said. but the problem with most of the ‘we’ normal people is that we do not give ourselves time to think about what we are doing now, what do we actually want to do and how can we do what we are doing better or how can we give more time to what do we actually want to do?

  3. Vivek

    Your daily job might leave you with “too little time” to pursue your dreams.- well said.

    We always can continue with our passions as they are the one’s that delay’s our ageing process, a person may be a professional but he is like a child when he do things closer to his heart.

    Very well written, hopes it inspires me to do things that “I LUV TO DO ” . Kudo….s

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