Lack of passion no joke

I finally agreed to hire a business coach to help me out of my funk. After only one session she concluded, “Hesh, your problem is simple. You just don’t have enough passion for your work.”

Of course, she then offered me a six-month process, costing thousands of dollars to get me back on track. However, I must say she was very ethical in her approach and suggested I get a medical check up to rule out any physical or mental health issues.

I agreed and decided to go for the best and reserved a week at the Mayo clinic. I signed up for the service that included all of the latest cutting-edge medical studies, even genetic code analysis. For a week I was probed, hypnotised, prodded with acupuncture needles and given MRI scans by the top scientists in the world. On the final day I sat in the office of the chief of medicine, awaiting the news.

The doctor was direct. “Hesh, we have found a genetic flaw in your chromosome makeup. I am sorry to say but you lack the correct DNA to have a fully functionally passion gene.” He pushed the box of Kleenex across the desk expecting me to become teary-eyed. Instead, I laughed.

“Doc, for the first time in my life, I did not have to question why I am different,” I said with excitement.

“I’ve lived my life with constant anxiety and guilt, never understanding why I was different to all my fellow business school graduates (Harvard class 1984). I had the grades to get in but, I was never as successful as my classmates.”

I finally understood why; it had nothing to do with an unwillingness to take risks. No, I lacked passion for anything and everything because of a genetic fluke. I asked the doctor whether I could expect a cure in my lifetime. “Sorry Hesh,” he said, “compared to all the life-threatening genetic illnesses of the world, extensive research into your disease is just not going to be a priority.”

And then he hit me with a question that he thought would put an end to the discussion, “Hesh, can you honestly disagree?”

“Yes, I can,” I shouted. “If you could help people like me, we could then change the world for the better. It would take only decades rather than a millennium.”

I returned to my room, arranged for a massage, and I had a few imported beers while I waited. As I relaxed, I realised that I had not considered all of the ramifications of a cure for a genetic lack of passion. 

Imagine a world run amok with people of passion. It would be hard to sit next to anyone on an aeroplane. Now, you can expect some quiet if you stare out the window. The person next to you usually gets the hint and does not engage you in conversation. But with a world of passionate people, we would constantly be harangued about the latest and greatest business since Amway.

In retrospect I have come to realise the world may have just the right number of passionate people. We don’t want to play with the cosmos. We could end up like the Chinese authorities, who tried to enforce a one-child policy but failed to realise that most families would want only males. Now, 30 years later, there are a lot of lonely single guys in Beijing’s bars.

The same could happen with the passion gene. We would have a world full of very passionate people. And we all know that there is an inverse correlation between being passionate and being able to laugh at oneself. We would all be so serious about our goals and dreams that I would be out of a job as a humour columnist.

• US-based columnist Hesh Reinfeld’s tongue-in-cheek look at the world of business will appear regularly in WA Business News.