Let’s pause for a minute of reflection today. Here’s the question:

In this moment, are the tasks you undertake today born of your heart’s desire, or are they mere obligations you’re bound to fulfill?

It’s just a binary question with at most four combination of answer, but it’s not easy to give a simple, definite response or even directly confront the truth for some people. Here’s one answer from Ariana Grande though, in her Vogue 19 cover interview

After years of local children’s theater, Grande landed a role in the Broadway musical 13. (She was 14 at the time.) Weeks after the musical closed, she was cast as the goofy sidekick Cat Valentine on the Nickelodeon show Victorious, which made her a star with the tween set. “I never really saw myself as an actress,” she says, “but when I started talking about wanting to make R&B music at 14, they were like, ‘What the fuck would you sing about? This is never going to work. You should audition for some TV shows and build yourself a platform and get yourself out there, because you’re funny and cute and you should do that until you’re old enough to make the music you want to make.’ So I did that. I booked that TV show, and then I was like, OK, now can I make music?” While Victorious marched on, in her free time Grande liked to upload YouTube videos of herself singing covers of Adele, Whitney Houston, and Mariah Carey. It was a virtuoso rendition of Carey’s “Emotions,” which Grande posted in August 2012, when she was 19, that made her a hot property. Since then she has worked at a frantic pace, turning out five albums in six years, all of them certified platinum, and touring the world three times.

I recall encountering similar sentiments expressed by CEOs and distinguished scholars, illustrating that it’s not uncommon for individuals, even those who achieve great success, to initially engage in work that doesn’t align with their ultimate aspirations. This suggests that, while passion is a powerful motivator, there exists a delicate equilibrium between immediate desires and strategic, long-term planning.

And here’s the most interesting answer I’ve read so far:

– I found it hard to distinguish your “no"s, whether you won’t or you can’t…

– Do they have a difference?