For his inaugural address, College President Jim Yong Kim chose to speak on passion, a fitting choice for a man who rose to such heights thanks to that attribute. Standing at the lectern, with the library as a backdrop, Kim urged those assembled to find their passion.
As a medical anthropologist, Kim is not only passionate, he also stands for moral and social justice. His brand of passion is twice as inspiring: In the process of realizing his own aspirations, he has managed to positively affect hundreds of lives.
Passion, though, can also bring out the worst in human nature. What to make of the passionate banker who gambles with the markets and, as a consequence, risks the financial stability of consumers? Or the doctor who treats only the wealthiest patients? To what extent should our society permit passion absent morality?
In a panel on leadership for social change held the day before Kim's inauguration, CEO of General Electric Jeff Immelt '78 answered these questions with a personal anecdote. He spoke of a time when he strongly disliked environmentalists because they obstructed his goals as CEO of GE. In short, passions collided.
Immelt noted, however, that competing interests don't always have to struggle for dominance rather, they can coexist. In Immelt's case, sustainability ended up proving helpful for profits, so he embraced the green movement as one that had potential to bring in more money. GE is now considered a leader in the field of renewable resource technology.
As Kim would put it, Immelt merged passion with practicality, and it worked. Key to this formula is creativity. It was creativity that led Kim to pursue studies in the humanities so as to better understand the complexity of delivering health care to impoverished nations. It is innovation that can turn passion for seemingly selfish causes i.e., getting rich or becoming prominent in one's field into passion with greater purpose. Assuming the world's troubles as your own does not necessarily call for the sacrifice of your personal goals.
Which raises another question: Should we Dartmouth students feel obligated to assume the world's problems as our own? The obvious answer is yes and it seems simple enough. The tools to enact social change are at our disposal, the expertise to guide can be found in every classroom on campus, and the funding to make great ideas become reality is plentiful.
But the reality is less straightforward. One part of the speech struck me in particular. Kim declared, "You have to work hard at finding something you can tackle with passion for a big chunk of your life and find meaning in it. That's an active and an urgent task. You need to start it now."
Finding one's passion is a task that, despite its urgency, cannot be rushed. With those 38 words, Kim summarized what college means to many. College may be a time to prepare for the "real world," but it's also a stalling tactic. The prospect of finding one's passion while diving into an academic track, all in the same four years, is exciting even if it's a little daunting.
But when it comes to deciding what you want to tackle for the rest of your life, there's no sense in making a rash decision. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the generation born between 1957 and 1964 (our parents) held 11 jobs on average from ages 18 to 42. It is evident that developing passion is a process of trial and error. Getting it right the first time is unlikely.
If we all heed the message of Kim's speech, this campus will no doubt see an even greater outpouring of talent and brilliance. Failing to do so would defeat the purpose of bringing such a diverse group of individuals together in the first place. But in the search for a passion or career or life goal, we cannot be too hasty. Nor should we view the contest between self-interest and doing good as a zero-sum game.
That said, once we do find our respective passions, there's nothing left to do but to put them into practice: It's our obligation.
