Passion
and
purpose

Key
to
success
and
happiness

Dorji
Wangchuk


ABSTRACT

This
lecture
delivered
to
Bhutanese
Youth
for
Climatic
Action
looks
at
the
importance
of
discovering
one’s

passion
and
purpose
in
life.


Introduction – Why is passion important?

Skills, knowledge and hard work are often cited as key to success in life. Of course, these
things are important. They are, however, basic necessities but not sufficient to lead you to
success or happiness. I know many people who have all those qualities and yet do not
get anywhere in life. Even if we look around us, we see lots of highly skilled and hard
working engineers who have graduated from the world’s best universities. And what we
get from them are matchbox buildings and bumpy and pot-holed roads. We have people
who have done their MBA from every thinkable top business schools in the world and yet
our private sector continues to slumber. We have so many educated people and yet we
cannot even fix our own education system. It has been more than ten years that we are
talking about mismatch between the demand and supply of our job market. The problem
not only persists but has even gone worse.

One could go on and on with such examples. What’s wrong with us? Where are we
lacking?

We lack passion! And everything that comes with that – like commitment, concerns,
dedication, diligence, drive, dignity of labour, etc. We even lack a purpose in life.

One common trait of successful people is passion. Dasho Neten

Zangmo, the forceful chairperson of the Anti Corruption
Commission is a very passionate person. So are people like prime
minister Jigmi Y Thinley and opposition leader Tshering Tobgay.
And so is the guy who owns Karma’s Coffee in town.

One of the main reasons why our private sector is never taking off is the lack of passion
among people in that sector. It is not because government is not doing enough. Our
business owners work with a get-rich-quick mentality. Our sales people operate with
take-it-or-leave-it paradigm. Everyone here would have walked into a store in Jaigaon at
some point of time. The last time I did that the guy nearly sold the whole shop to me.
That’s passion.



Passion and purpose Dorji Wangchuk
2

 Whereas, we have the Bhutanese film industry where even without any government
support the industry is growing. In the late nineties, few Bhutanese started venturing
into making films. Today the fledging industry sustains some 1000 people. The industry
was recently conferred the National Order of Merit by His Majesty the King. This is an
example of what passion could achieve.

As much as I realise the importance of passion, I must confess that I had to wrack my
brain as to how I should illustrate this important subject. So I followed a golden advice
someone gave me some time back. When in doubt look deeper into yourself. Tell things
from your heart, you can’t go wrong.

So bear with me if I mention a few things I did in my life, few passions I have cultivated
over the years and a purpose in life I have set for myself, which I have now fine-tuned as
I embark on the second part of my life – assuming I would live up to 80. My sole intent is
to encourage you to find your passion and the purpose of your life as you begin your
long journey in the real world.

Twenty years ago…

…in the summer of 1990 I was on my university

break - trekking in the Alps of Northern Italy
when I reached, what was for me, the most
beautiful spot on earth overlooking several snow capped mountains, clear blue sky and
wide green valleys. The place obviously reminded me of home and so like every
Bhutanese I felt home sick. But I even ran into a deeper thoughts and a greater dilemma
asking myself as to “Where I was heading for with my life?” Of course I knew I was
studying. And when I finished my studies I knew I was going to work in the
government. “But in what way? What do I take back to my country that has put me into
this world, sent me to not only the world’s oldest university in Bologna but also to enjoy
the most beautiful places on earth.” I tried to find some answer but in vain.

There comes a time in our life when we are all faced with these tough questions. Some of
us choose to ignore them. Some keep asking them throughout their lives and never find
the answer.



Passion and purpose Dorji Wangchuk
3

 As for me, two years later, in 1992, on another summer break but this time in my own
country I found what I wanted to do in my life. Walking down the Norzin Lam I came
across several shops known as video parlours (or video rentals) that were hiring out
cheap Hong Kong movies and B-graded western films - some of which were double or
triple X-rated.

I could count some thirty odd rentals stores doing a

roaring business against two bookstores that were
totally deserted. What I saw was so disgusting that it
spurred me to believe that this country needed
something better - or something less harmful.

So between the beautiful mountains of northern Italy and the dingy video rental shops of
Thimphu, I found something I wanted to do in my life. I wanted to introduce television
in Bhutan because the video culture was ruining my country.

Whereas, some of my colleagues had chosen to settle in Italy working for big
multinationals, I would return and work for my community. I realised that money was
not the most important to me. It was not the purpose of my life.

In my final year at the university I worked in local television stations – without any
payment – pulling cables, carrying tripods and pushing tracks and trucks. I wanted to
gain some valuable experiences and equip myself with whatever was missing from my
formal engineering course. I returned to Bhutan in 1995 armed with a degree and with a
burning desire to change the world.

But my dream and ambitions were short lived. BBS was not ready, my boss was not keen
and my technical colleagues had not even seen a colour bar. Whenever I raised the topic
on television in management meetings, my boss would frown at me. When I raised it in
higher government meetings many people were alarmed and some were even horrified.
One minister, who is now retired, even warned me that I would land in jail if I talked
about TV. Because apparently His Majesty the Fourth King had mentioned somewhere
that he didn’t want TV in Bhutan.

So waiting for a more conducive environment, I did other things like introducing FM
services all over the country through a series of repeater stations on mountaintops. But I



Passion and purpose Dorji Wangchuk
4

 kept my television dream alive. When I made some official trips abroad I visited TV
channels and kept abreast of the latest trends and technology.

Then came 1999 – the silver jubilee year of enthronement of His Majesty the Fourth Druk
Gyalpo. Everything that was proposed was approved as long as you dedicated it to the
celebration. I jumped into the bandwagon and got my dream project approved by the
government. The only problem was that I had just four months to build and start a brand
new TV station and none of my technical colleagues had even seen a television camera.
When I flew to Paris to buy some equipment, the guys at Thomcast told me that either I
was mad or I was a genius. I thought I was both. I could write a book on the advent of
television in Bhutan. But to cut the long story short, I finally accomplished my dream of
bringing TV into the country. The rest is now history. And of course, like every
successful venture, it has many fathers.

For introducing TV in a record time I was conferred the Asia Pacific Engineering Award
by the Asia Pacific Broadcasting Union. Back home I was slammed with 141 audit
memos by the Royal Audit Authority. I was denied my promotion. Everything in good
faith I suppose. Both records remain unbroken today. The reason I am citing these two
facts is to illustrate the point that when you are passionate neither an award can pull you
up nor can audit memos push you down. You can be exceptionally strong.

Before I dwell further on passion and purpose in life, let me talk to you briefly about the
ultimate purpose in life - happiness. However, I am neither a sociologist nor a
philosopher and much of what I have put here are from my own life experience that I
gladly share with you – hoping that you will all be inspired by these “great words of
wisdom”

Happiness…
….is for every human being, irrespective of race, religion, ethnicity or nationality, the
ultimate goal in life – the ultimate purpose. If you look at yourself and ask yourself why
you are doing what you are doing, you will conclude that eventually you are seeking
happiness. When I was young I wanted to grow up and make tons of money because as a
child I didn’t have any. I thought I would dish out money to everyone who was in need
and make everyone, and myself, happy. Today my younger daughter wants to buy a big
car for her mom because she thinks it will make her mom happy. When I was the lowest


Passion and purpose Dorji Wangchuk
5

 ranking technician I desperately wanted to move up the career ladder because I thought
people higher up were happier. In all these examples one finds that the ultimate intent is
happiness.

In trying to seek happiness we also run through several ways, means and experiences.
Like the time when I thought that if I worked hard and take some pain now, I would be
happier later. I thought going through some fair amount of unpleasant times was
necessary to achieve happiness at a later stage. So I put my head down and worked and
worked and waited for rewards and happiness. It became an eternal waiting game.
Waiting for something that never came and waiting for something that didn’t exist.

Does this sound familiar to anyone here?

Then at another point of time in my life, I thought life was too short to waste away and so
I would hit the dance floor quite often and knew every discotheque along the Adriatic
coast in Italy. I dreamt of fancy cars, blonde girls and heavy-cylindered bikes.
Fortunately I didn’t fall under the spell of self-indulgence but had enough fun to make
me realize that they made no sense either as far as happiness was concerned. I was
seeking happiness somewhere – outside my own self.

Then when the world was falling apart in front of me, like when I lost my mother, I
thought how useless and hopeless life was anyway. You slog in school, slog at the
university, slog at work and ultimately die one day.

When you, or if you, can transcend all the above and when you can find something you
can do meaningfully and enjoy at the same time - you have found your passion and your
purpose of life.

So my advice to anyone seeking happiness is “Do what you love and love what you do”

Well, you might say, “Isn’t that too obvious, too simple?” Yes it is. But the fact is, today I
come across many people who are neither leading a meaningful life nor enjoying what
they are doing. You have many people who are killing their lives away somewhere.



Passion and purpose Dorji Wangchuk
6

 They are “there” because their relatives wanted them to be there. They are there because
they are scared the society will scorn them if they are somewhere. They are there
because they are scared to come out of the comfort zone. And sadly, they have no
passion and few don’t even have a purpose in life. Little wonder then that certain
problems rarely get solved in this country.

Most of you are around the age where your parents want you to be this, your sweethearts
want you to become that, and your relatives want you to be altogether something else.
You are being pulled in so many directions. Then you have your temptations. You may
find that to be a dasho is great. Airline pilots may look glamorous. Police officer can be
cool. To work in a bank may fetch more salary.

The only way for you to take charge of your own life – your life, is to find your own
passion and the purpose of your life.

So what is passion and what is purpose?

Purpose gives you the meaning to your life. It gives you a sense of direction. It sets your
principle and ideology. Passion is something that drives your purpose. It fires you and
propels you with inner motivations. Promotions and audit memos don’t mean a thing to
you. Temptation won’t divert you. When my mind goes little astray I realign myself,
“Does that fit within my purpose?” Like when I resigned from BBS there were couple of
job offerings for me in Bangkok, Kuala Lumpur and Moscow. None of them fitted with
my passion or purpose. You may think I am 43 and so it is easier for me to decide. The
truth is, I was nineteen when I opted to join Radio NYAB that later became BBS. I was
actually offered to work for RICB for a better salary, free housing and other perks.
Technical people were in great demand back then.

So what is your passion and what is purpose?

I feel you already know the answer. May be you wanted to be a performer, an artist, a
writer, or a social worker or social advocate. Or may be even a simple businessman or a
yak herder or a farmer. But they are all obscured by your fears, your wanting of approval
from others, the conflicting advice from your parents or the rigid conventions set up by
the society.



Passion and purpose Dorji Wangchuk
7

 Ours is a great nation of Buddhism. So to put it even in a Buddhist metaphor we all take
the human form for a purpose (mi rayray lu soenam ray). The problem is - you need to
discover that yourself. No one can the find your passion for you. You will not find it in
someone or somewhere. You will not find it in money of material commodities. You
need to look deeper into your inner self.

When you have (more or less) found it…

Start acting on it! There is a time to sit down and think and plan. But there should be
time for action. You need to start acting on it even if you are not sure 100%. You need to
start by doing small things; taking small steps. One Bhutanese student in Japan, who was
about to graduate, asked me on FaceBook chat - what he could do to serve our country. I
told him to wear the national dress for the graduation ceremony that was happening
three days later.

Make it dynamic…
Because a static purpose or passion is another means of setting yourself up for failure and
disappointment. Especially the search for the purpose should be a continuous search. I
still keep asking myself, “Who am I? Am I on the right path? Where will I be after ten
years?”

After I introduced television in BBS as the chief engineer, I jumped to documentary

production and journalism as an ordinary producer in BBS. Being a chief engineer was
boring. Because I was rather a super administration officer. I didn’t study differential
equations and electromagnetic wave propagations to prepare tender documents. I didn’t
want to spend the rest of my life behind a desk having coffee with contractors or
verifying bills. I wanted to move on.

So I grabbed a camera, placed a tripod on my shoulder and off I went doing a road show.
As I traveled the length and breath of our beautiful country I realized I was not working –
I was having fun. I was doing what I loved and I loved what I was doing. This is
passion! I was doing something useful for my society, enjoying every minute of my life
and getting paid for it. That is Gross National Happiness!



Passion and purpose Dorji Wangchuk
8

 I also had my own talk show “Q&A with Dorji Wangchuk” that still holds the record for
the longest running talk show on BBS – 112 episodes in two and half years – every week
without a break. When people ask me what is that “something” that is missing –
something that differentiates between my shows and the shows that you see today on
BBS, I tell them there is a lack of passion. You can see it in their eyes; you can hear it in
their voice.

So make your passion and purpose dynamic. How do you do that? Seek to write rather
than be a famous writer, seek to sing rather than be a famous singer. I became a
documentary filmmaker not to win all those awards but simply to make documentaries.

You need not be restricted to one passion in life. You can have as many. After I left BBS,
I started writing for Bhutan Times. The first article took me 35 days to complete.
Nowadays I can scribble something worth publishing in 35 minutes. Passion can do
wonders.

In 2007 I happened to go to a remote village in the Black Mountain area to film the Olep
community – the last bunch of hunter-gatherers in Bhutan. The misery I saw there
shocked me and gave a greater meaning to my life. I became a social worker and social
advocate. I wrote the most powerful column titled “What does GNH mean to her?”
about that neglected community. It was powerful because I wrote it with passion - and I
wrote it from my heart. But I didn’t just make noise. I rallied some support for the
community and visited the valley 11 times in two years. Now I am even building a
temple. I have no money but lots of passion to see that they get a temple.

In conclusion…

Our country is changing. New realities are setting in. Old challenges remain. We
Bhutanese need to address these challenges. No one will come from outside and solve
our problems for us.

These challenges and realities have also given rise to host of new opportunities where
you could find your passion and your purpose in life. One of my former colleagues often



Passion and purpose Dorji Wangchuk
9

 jokes that he always finds it hard to introduce me to someone because I have too many
professions and designations.

People often ask me how I manage to do so many things together. I manage because I am
passionate about all the things I do. And I don’t venture into things that I am not
passionate about. There is no limit to how many things people can do at the same time.
Unless you set the limitation yourself. Leonardo Da Vinci was a painter, sculptor,
scientist, engineer, biologist, writer, poet and a wonderful musician. Our own Dasho
Shingkhar Lam is a master of all 13 arts and crafts (zorig chusum).

There is also no limit to what one single individual can achieve single-handedly. With all
the things that need to be done and with all the challenges and obstacles, you might
wonder, “How can I as a one single individual do anything?” Don’t think so low or so
small of yourself. You can never underestimate the power of an individual to make
things happen. Mother Teresa was a simple nurse from Albania – one of the most
backward countries in Europe. Gandhi led 400 million Indians to freedom from the
mighty British Empire. Our own King Jigme Singye Wangchuck defeated a battle-
weathered and heavily-armed foreign militants with a small and inexperienced
Bhutanese army.

So where do you start? You have to start with yourself and you have to start small. You
can start by asking the basic question, “Am I really enjoying what I am doing and doing
what I enjoy most?”

And when you have answered that follow your heart, not your relatives!



______
Dorji Wangchuk currently works as the director of the royal office for media. Views expressed herein are personal.



Passion and purpose Dorji Wangchuk
10