#12 - Elizabeth Gilbert on passion and curiosity
Are you a jackhammer or a hummingbird?
The world is divided into two kinds of people. There are the jackhammers and there are the hummingbirds.
-Liz Gilbert-
There’s a few things you should know about Elizabeth Gilbert.
In 2006, when she published Eat, Pray, Love, she had already been writing professionally for 13 years.
Gilbert published her first short-story in 1993. Over the following decade, she published profiles in magazines like GQ and Esquire, as well as various books, winning several awards along the way. Her third book, The Last American Man, was nominated for the 2002 National Book Award.
My point: EPL wasn’t some novice fluke, but the work of a dedicated craftsman.1
But this OGT isn’t about Eat, Pray, Love.
It’s about what Liz Gilbert realized about herself after her EPL fame thrust her in the spotlight. And why she stopped telling people to follow their passion.
That was the subject of a speech she gave called, Flight of The Hummingbird: The Curiosity Driven Life, which you can also find on Oprah’s podcast (here).
I highly recommend it, but if you’d rather just get the best idea, and fast—you’re in the right place.
Are you a jackhammer or a hummingbird?
Ever since EPL made her a global icon, Gilbert has been advising people to follow their passion. The reason for that is simple— she always had one.
The fact is, I have led my entire life guided by passion, particularly in regard to my work as a writer, which is a vocation that I have taken on my entire life with a love that you could call obsessive.
Passion has worked for me. Passion was the thing that kept me writing in the early years before anybody else except me cared about what I was doing.
I did that day after day, year after year, even when I was getting nothing out of it— except for rejection letter after rejection letter after rejection letter. But I didn't care. Nobody loves being rejected, but my passion for writing was so big that it made me stay in the game…
Of course, the minute I had the opportunity to speak in public about the thing I cared about a believed in the most, what did I talk about?
Passion!
But then she received a long letter from a fan.
The fan explained that she had no single passion, but many interests, and that not only had Gilbert’s speech rung untrue, but depressing.
That fan letter changed Gilbert forever. Now, she advises to follow, not passion (unless you know yours), but something else.
Do yourself a great kindness and just for now just take the word, “passion” off the table…Let it go.
Instead of that anxiety and urgency and panic chasing a passion … do something that’s a lot easier, a lot simpler: just follow your curiosity.
Why curiosity?
In contrast to the demands, the urgency, the greed, the mania that can be associated with passion, curiosity doesn't do that to you. Curiosity will never strip your life bare. Curiosity will never make outrageous demands.
Curiosity only does one thing and that is to give. And what it gives you are clues on the incredible scavenger hunt of your life.
Gilbert leaves us with a great image and, perhaps, a choice.
“There are two kinds of people,” she tells us. “There are the jackhammers and there are the hummingbirds.”
Jackhammers are people like me. Passion in our hands, were focused on that until the end of time. We tend to be obsessive, even fundamentalist, and sometimes a little difficult.
Hummingbirds spend their lives doing it very differently.
They move from tree to tree from flower to flower from field to field trying this trying this and that. And two things happen: they create incredibly rich, complex lives for themselves, and they also end up cross-pollinating the world.
That is the service that you do if you are a hummingbird. You bring an idea from here to over here, where you learn something else, and then you take it to the next thing…Your perspective ends up keeping the entire culture aerated, mixed up, and open to the new and fresh.
And if that is how you are constructed by your divine maker, then that is how we need you to be.
…And if you can let go of passion, just for a little white, and follow your curiosity, it might just might lead you to your passion.
The OGT
Sebastian Maniscalco and Mark Cuban - they’re jackhammers. They started out right after college—Maniscalco as a comedian, Cuban as an entrepreneur— and that’s what they still do.
Steve Martin was a jackhammer, at least with standup. But then he gave it up, started playing music, acting, directing, became a playwright. So maybe he’s a hybrid—a humminghammer.
Michelle Obama is a bit of a hummingbird who thought she was a jackhammer—corporate law which had her feeling lost, turned into a life of public service, and now an author and speaker.
Oprah sort of fell into broadcasting, and then again into TV—she was a bit of a hummingbird who found her way to jackhammerism.
Tim Ferriss seems to have the focus of a jackhammer, but the open mind of a hummingbird, somewhat like Arnold. They’re jackbirds.
I’m a hummingbird—a dilettante, if you will— in search of various, short-term jackhammer opportunities.
What are you?
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Past OGTs
In fact, the book was planned. She made the trip, in part, based on a $200,000 advance from the publishing company to whom she sold the idea of “personal and spiritual exploration” prior to taking it.
Awesome breakdown and tracking of her Gilbert's amazing journey. Based on your analysis of how this mental model applies to your prior OGT subjects, it seems like a person can either be a jackhammer, a hummingbird, or both.
Can someone be neither, and then is the important thing to know which one we (think we) are?