So, What Do You Do?

Just a week or so ago, I delivered my twelfth annual "Senior Farewell" poem to my school's graduating class. It was a poem about cliches. The gist of it is that some sayings become cliches because they are really wise ("Don't judge a book by its cover") and others because they are simply easy ("Life is simple"). My advice was, don't accept anything until you give it a lot of good thought. Folk wisdom can save your life or ruin it, as far as I'm concerned. It's up to each of us to figure out how to apply it.

It got me thinking about this one: "If you do something you love, you will never work a day in your life."

Not bad, I guess. It makes sense on some levels. (I do think, however, that it discounts the fact that doing something you love as a job can make it feel like work.) Still, my biggest problem with this is the principle behind it. It might be overstating it a little, but I always thought this cliche comes dangerously close to implying that your job is your life -- that is is the source of your happiness or sadness.