What a seriously brilliant idea. A place where people can discuss, question, and analyze what they’re most passionate about. I commend Matt for this endeavor; it’s creating an environment that encourages people to think about what can sometimes be easily ignored. For a few of us, this site is probably forcing us to name a passion we might not have realized yet. Petra, I’m calling you out because I definitely related to everything you wrote in your entry. Especially when you said you had a few interests, and felt like none of them can be labeled as an actual “passion.” I’ve met a lot of people like Petra and myself, the supposed “passionless” whose true passions are just a little more difficult to articulate. I credit that mainly to the fact that our generation tends to dabble in a lot of different fields of interest rather than to delve deep into one subject matter. In an over-achieving, information-loaded, web savvy generation, it’s pretty typical for us to have surface level interests in many different areas. I’m definitely not saying this applies to everyone our age, but in my experience, I’ve met a lot of people who are afraid to voice their passions, or people who never even gave a serious thought to what their passion might be.
I admit, “Passion” can be a scary word. It can be scary to me at least. I’ve always felt like it needed to be something that shook me to my core and drove me mad. I’ve put “Passion” on such a high pedestal that I couldn’t even reach it in the end. It’s only been very recently that I’ve finally been able to articulate my passions (I’ll have to actually talk about what I’m passionate about in a future post). It didn’t happen until I stopped thinking of it as some lofty ideal greater than life itself. You don’t need passion to get through life; remember that. But if you’re finally able to find it, that passion will make life so much more fascinating to live through.
Sometimes life is coming at us so fast and our thoughts are so loud that we forget to stop and take a beat. We forget to rest. People always relate life to rhythm, harmonies, and melodies, but what about those rests? It’s been a while since I’ve played music but I’d relate passion to that suspenseful moment in a composition when a multi-measure rest finally ends and the musician can finally continue to play. Whenever I came across one of these long rests in sheet music, I was simply dying to move on and play that next note. Passion lies in the milliseconds before you get to play again. It’s that intense desire to move forward in whatever it is that excites you. When you stop and take that beat (or that really long rest), what’s the next note you’re dying to play?
For the supposedly “passionless,” I have only this to say: Don’t be afraid of that word. It’s not as epic or as magical as you make it out to be. The next time you feel like you’re caught in the chaos of life, just rest and ask yourself what you wish you could do next.
