Why "Find Your Passion" Became Cruel Advice

“Find your passion” used to sound like freedom.

It implied that work could be meaningful. That life could feel aligned. That if you paid attention to what lit you up, you’d eventually build something that didn’t drain you.

For a lot of people now, that advice doesn’t land as hope.

It lands as pressure.

When work feels exhausting or empty, people are told to look inward. To ask themselves what they really want. To figure out their “why.” To reconnect with their passion.

And when that doesn’t work, the assumption is simple and quiet:

you must have chosen wrong.

You didn’t follow your calling closely enough.

You weren’t brave enough.

You settled.

So the dissatisfaction becomes personal. Moral, even.

But what if the problem isn’t a lack of passion?

What if passion was never meant to carry the weight we’ve put on it?

Somewhere along the way, “find your passion” stopped being guidance and started being a requirement. Passion stopped being something that added meaning to life and became something you were expected to monetize, perform, and sustain under pressure.

Passion language got absorbed into systems that benefit from emotional investment without offering protection in return.

If you love what you do, you’re expected to accept less pay.

If it’s your calling, you’re expected to work longer hours.

If it matters to you, you’re expected to sacrifice boundaries.

Passion becomes leverage.

And when work is framed as self-expression, exploitation gets harder to name. Sacrifice gets reframed as dedication. Burnout gets reframed as a personal failure to manage your love for the work.

If you’re tired, it’s because you cared too much.

If you’re underpaid, it’s because you chose meaning over money.

If you’re burned out, it’s because you didn’t balance your passion properly.

The system disappears from the story.

What remains is a quiet sense of shame.

This hits especially hard now, when stability is already fragile. When safety nets are thin. When people can’t afford for their income to fluctuate wildly.

Asking people to tie their survival to passion in those conditions isn’t inspiring. It’s dangerous.

Passion is volatile.

It changes.

It dims under constant demand.

And when passion collapses, people don’t just lose motivation. They lose a sense of who they are.

This is especially cruel for people whose work already requires care, creativity, or emotional presence. Educators. Artists. Writers. Caregivers. Service workers.

They aren’t exhausted because they lacked discipline.

They’re exhausted because caring was used against them.

So when burnout sets in, people go searching for themselves instead of looking at the conditions they’re in. They try to rediscover joy in systems that punish rest. They try to reignite passion in environments that drain it.

That search can feel like another failure.

But here’s the quiet truth.

Not every job needs to be meaningful.

Not every person needs to monetize what they love.

Sometimes work is just work, and meaning lives somewhere else. In relationships. In art that doesn’t pay. In care that isn’t optimized. In creativity that doesn’t perform on demand.

Decoupling worth from passion gives people room to breathe.

It lets creativity exist without being consumed by survival.

It lets people choose stability without shame.

It lets passion return to its natural role: something that nourishes, not something that has to prove its value.

“Find your passion” became cruel advice when passion was turned into a test.

You are not broken for losing passion in systems that extract it.

And you are not obligated to turn what you love into something that has to pay your rent.

Sometimes the most humane choice is to protect your passion from the place you earn your living.