Finding Your Passion

I stumbled across this quote in a recent in an interview with Joseph J. Plumeri from the Willis Group:

Q. What questions do you ask job candidates?

A. What I really want to know is what kind of person I’m dealing with. So I ask only one question. I say, “Tell me what you’re passionate about.” That’s it. Tell me what you’re passionate about.

Q. Do they ask if you mean at work or outside of work?

A. Whatever you want to talk about. Tell me what you’re passionate about. Digging holes. Riding bikes. I’m looking to see if they’ve got a passion. I’m looking to see if there’s anything inside, other than what they do. And how passionate could they be, therefore, about being here? And how excited and involved could they be?

I spent a lot of time thinking about this. What am I passionate about?

The answer starts with something weird and very specific, but why I'm passionate about it ends up explaining a lot about who I am and how I see the world.

I really like yeast. I am passionate about yeast. Yeast is the foundation of so many things I find wonderful: bread, beer, sauerkraut, yoghurt, sourdough, and champagne.

I have been baking bread since I got my first apartment in 1996, and find it an easy way to calm myself through kneading dough, the smell of bread backing, and the amazing transformation process that starts with four ingredients (flour, yeast, salt, water) and delivers a crusty, warm gooey loaf of wonderful.

Since 2006 I've made most of the bread we eat at home. I mix the dough, let it proof overnight, and will bake something in the morning. I don't carefully measure this, and have added lots of ingredients to mix it up over time: left-over blueberry oatmeal, rye, onion bits, and nuts.

And beer! I have started to taste beer like some taste wine, paying close attention to characteristics of breweries, how the water quality impacts the beer, and the funny things yeast does to transform water and grain into Guinness.

And what ties this all together, and why I am passionate about yeast, is that to work with yeast relies upon a process you can't fundamentally see, but have to trust that it will work out. It is not precise, it is forgiving and finicky. You can't rely upon it to realize the same result each time you use it, as yeast changes over time, and that changes the flavor.

So yeast yields serendipity, and I love serendipity. And I think the universe is mostly serendipitous, and not precise, and finicky and forgiving. There are so many things that could go wrong, but often we happen to find the spouse who makes us happy, your genes combine in random ways to yield a lovely child with your little hands, and your Saturday afternoon is filled with quiet and the smell of bread baking.

And yeast can be like that smell: we can trap it and bottle it, but mostly it is all around us. I've made hard cider by simply leaving apple juice sit out on the counter, and sooner or later you have homespun hooch. And then vinegar.

You can make sourdough anywhere in the world by simply letting the yeast live in the dough you make. And I think that we could all be happy somewhere, make something of our lives with the ingredients we're given, if we just be sure to pay attention and not try to be precise but forgiving.