Media, movies, TV, novels focus on passion as something having to do with lust and the body. It’s an overused theme from romance novels and chick flicks. We want it in our lives but we are also subtly influenced to believe that it doesn’t really exist. That’s why they write those novels, right? It’s all fiction and entertainment.
Used in the context of non-fiction it is either seen as a negative or it is seen as something like lightning striking. It is something only the élite have and has nothing to do with normal life. Women in politics are called passionate when they stand up to their male counterparts. It’s a put down and seen an emotion where none should exist. You seemingly can’t be rational and passionate at the same time. But if you are, then you are of the élite. The people who achieve greatness because they are passionate about something choose to expend their entire lives in pursuit of something. They aren’t ‘normal’ and are shown as shining examples of what is possible, all the while emphasising that real people aren’t like that and can’t do what they have done.
Real people who are passionate are show to have ’causes’ and to strive to achieve the betterment of something, but never truly succeed and are ‘inspirational’. So no matter how you slice it, being passionate just doesn’t seem to be something for the 99% and the best we can hope for is ‘good enough’. Or so says the anonymous voices of the media, TV, movies and novels. However, their relationship to the truth is hit and miss and it’s up to us to live our lives.
Life is for living and living passionately. Passion is love, but the kind of love that makes your heart sing for no other reason that it is possible. Passion can be about a color, a food, a place in the park, a type of exercise, or a way to travel. It can truly be about anything that makes you the happiest most joyful you there is. If you are passionate about swimming, go for it. Feel joy in collecting feathers, have a blast. Gardening? You bet. Feel another country calling…answer the call. Pack your bags, take a leap of faith and go. I have colleagues who felt called to another country and ended up not only living there, but changing their citizenship and adopting/being adopted by that place where their heart resides.
Be passionate. Crack yourself open and find out the truth inside you. Then let it out so we can hear the joy in your soul. You might just find that you’re not alone in singing that song. And your life might become a much classier, Real, romance novel….