Live you interest and Get earned for it

From childhood, I have been hearing this peace of advice from my elders that enjoy your work, make your livelihood your hobby and then you will never work your entire life because you will be playing instead. It was simple enough of an advice to understand but very difficult to implement. I could not see how can I begin to like my work. I liked to rest, to play games, to sleep, to collect stamps, to watch tv, to not do anything, etc, etc. But who would pay me to do these recreational activities unless I get recruited into a sports team.

I was actually lacking a curiosity for exploration at that time. Once I began to do scientific research at college, I realized that I can enjoy researching new phenomena for livelihood. But that still would get boring for me when I would attempt to push frontiers of science without having fully mastered its foundations. Only when I began to write software programs and that too for processing images and videos that I began to stay curious for longer hours while I studied or worked. Still, I would get a feeling that I am not regulating my efforts in understanding the bigger picture of the existence of this universe. As I would continue to ponder on ways to fill this gap in my approach of doing research, I came to a realization that understanding the purpose of ones creation holds the key to understanding the existence of universe. To this point, a scholar has famously said "one who finds himself finds God." And to understand ones self, one must understand ones mind, how it thinks, perceives, makes connections, reasons, and so on. But how can I apply this into my research in image processing software development, I asked. And I quickly got an answer, which was by learning to train computers to do that image processing for me using the model of a human mind. I could then see myself entering into the realm of artificial intelligence and machine learning.

I now feel that if I keep learning new ways to make intelligent systems that can automatically perceive and reason, I can continue to understand our mind better. Since mind is the supreme creation of God and the creator manifests himself in his creations, I can actually understand God better through my research.

So I like to explore the world around me, I like to research the scientific phenomena governing the happenings around me, I like to answer questions arising in my mind regarding the reason for our creation, I like to pass on my knowledge to others through teaching, I like to train machines to do tasks for me, and I like to see the results of my efforts within my attention span for a given quantifiable task. And the goal for me is to center my work for earning the livelihood around these likenesses.

I feel that I am quite close to achieving this goal because I have apparently taken the first set of steps of quantifying my likenesses and picking up the areas in my academic and professional fields of interest that are aligned with these areas of my personal interest. Now, I need to begin to fuse my profession into my daily life.

I need to continue to write software programs which would enable the training of machines to facilitate the image and video processing. And I need to keep doing this at home, as I wake up from sleep as I sit down for a few moments after having a sweet cup of tea with my wife. I need to adapt it as my life style. I need to find ways to infuse curiosity about my work in my family, get them to appreciate me and contribute in my efforts. And I need to start finding ways where I can use the skills learned here in areas that can directly benefit my community of brethren in faith.

Once I achieve this feat, I will be living my work and hence enjoying my living and thus getting paid for my enjoyment. Then, I will never have to work my whole life!