Today I read that people come to Berlin to discover their passion and whether they can make a career out of it. I thought that had a nice blend of romanticism and capitalism to it. We all want to make money doing what we love, and that’s the dream lots of rich people tell us made them successful . We equate passion and wealth as two sides of a balanced equation and think that if we can only solve for what we want we will be fine. I think there’s a bit of survivorship bias to the wealth = passion equation, but more importantly I’m not confident it’s even important to be passionate about what earns you money. Cancelling out for work, there are so many things in our lives that can and will bring us joy. It’s better to spend time and energy there than spend it making money. If you find a job you love then that is a fantastic stroke of luck, but don’t search for meaning in a job because you’ve listened to too many podcasts. The reality of Berlin is that offers people is a chance to fail doing what they love, so they can go back to earning money doing things they don’t love. But that doesn’t mean they won’t be happy, in fact I think most of them will be better for giving their dreams a shot, and they’ll be more realistic about what they love, and happier for it. At the end of the day that probably means they’ll be better capitalists as well. Happy people live longer after all.