When you love your job, you love your company, your position, and the fact that your employer puts food on your table.

You will do everything to keep your job—like agreeing to things you do not approve of, bending your core beliefs & philosophies—all in the name of esprit de corps and “company values.”

And then occasionally, you come out on the weekends with your co-workers—the very people you despise—to go bowling or swimming or dancing to some music you dislike at some fancy-smelling resort.

And given enough time, you get lucky. You draw the final cherry. After a million soft power points & spreading the sheets for others to lay comfortably in, you get that big promotion.

“Senior Vice Executive Deskman.”

And it’s finally your turn to boss around the people you pretended to like—the jokers and horses you used to swim, joke & jab with.

Maybe you get the nicer car with the faux leather seats, perhaps a bigger keychain or a bigger bag (but not necessarily in that order).

But when you love your work, you sacrifice everything. You stay behind and work all hours of the night just to finish what you started—to balance, to align, to master.

You lock yourself behind a door, swallow the key, and force it out of you. You burn every usable piece of yourself, not for anyone, not even for yourself, but to shine a light on those images you see, those god-damned voices you hear in your head—because you believe that if you can hear them, it is your responsibility to make them exist in the world. To emancipate them from the darkness of oblivion.

Not for recognition or reward, but because to do otherwise would mean an unbearable madness. For it is what your body, what your bones demand—and you are only being true to your nature. However mad, and wild, and untamed it may be.

Because the very act of doing it fulfills your soul, that failing to satisfy it would leave you incomplete.

When you love your work, you don’t care about what people say. People talk, that’s what they do. But you do—and the doing is the talking.

It’s not your status, not your position; it’s not your car, not your paycheck, not the food on your table, nor the pat on your back.

It is not your house—you are the house, and it lives inside of you…

And to give it shelter is your life’s purpose.

When you love your work, you have so much to say, so much to give, so much to exude.

But when you love your job, you have nothing to say. Nothing to prove. So you simply let others speak for you.

That’s why I always say, be careful what you choose to love. And remember—that you can always...choose. Because if you don’t, someone will come to you bearing gifts and promises—you will smile, and the choice will have already been made for you.

Alas, in this life, you’re either one of two things: you’re either a sword swallower or a fire breather. You either swallow yourself whole or breathe yourself back into existence each passing day, hour, and minute that something or someone tries to take you away from it.

You choose.

Images via Unsplash. Photos by Mak, Jason An, and Umut Ozdemir.