Passion or lack thereof

My boyfriend and I were talking about our relative passion for our work. He is a grad student in the same department as me but we are in different (sub)fields. I expressed my concern that because I am not consumed with desire for my research, I may not be so successful in a research career. I often envy how motivated he is; he is deeply driven, almost obsessed with wanting to understand everything possible about his subject. He kind of surprised me today by saying that this is partly because he feels like he has to justify the importance of his work. The value and necessity of my research area is obvious, while he feels he must constantly explain why taxpayer money should pay for what he does. He feels he must work inexhaustibly to find material that is broadly interesting (i.e., beyond a handful of specialists). This also means there are fewer jobs for people like him because there’s less money for what he does. He feels like he has to be a rock star because there’s so much competition for those few jobs. I worry about getting a job too, but it’s true that there are more positions in my field than his. I’m not sure if there are more newly minted PhDs each year though. The competition is probably worse for him.