I have seen many times the grounds of this debate, and it doesn't always arrive at an agreed stand because, actually, if you look at it, they both play important roles in one's life depending on the situation at the moment.
Naturally, the one that's better is when someone is living according to their passion. This is why we've seen a lot of highly educated people and influential individuals switch into music because that's what their soul is yearning for, not the things they were doing before. We have a lot of them in Nigeria who were doing well in their professional fields but had to dump that and switch into what they love — music.
Using Falz as an example, he's a lawyer by profession, from a very wealthy background, and wasn't lacking anything in life. He pushed his academic profession aside and decided to do music, and that has made him very famous. There's one thing I love about him, just because he's a lawyer who fights against crime and corruption, most of his songs carry messages that speak against corruption, and he's not afraid of what the leaders of the country would say.
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One of the songs where he spoke so deeply about how corrupt Nigeria is, is titled “This is Nigeria.” In this song, he touched all areas, from how a snake swallowed a huge amount of money in a government house, to how religious houses are heavily extorting citizens and nobody is saying anything.
While it's also good to live according to what is available and not submit to passion is when things are very hard and one’s passion is very far from meeting his needs. In such cases, one needs to accept working or living outside of passion.
Just like in a country like mine, most of her citizens are not living by passion but rather living to survive, and that matters a lot too. There are some jobs that pay more than someone's passion. With that, the person does not need to be educated to know that it's better to go for what will put food on the table and cater for all of his financial needs, rather than settling for passion because he's looking for joy and satisfaction of the soul.
To some extent, people who pick their passion over living to survive are people who are left with many options, and also, people that don't face too much pressure in life. Just like that musician I gave as an example, he had many options, he wasn't lacking money, so it was easy for him to switch to music.
Let me use a low-class teacher as an example. A teacher that's not well-to-do can never settle for a monthly pay of $20 when he has the option of working in an oil company to earn $500 monthly. He can't choose that unless there's something wrong with his thinking faculty. Lol
So you see, more often than not, choosing one out of the two depends on the situation one finds himself in.
Thanks!
