No, I’m not suddenly writing potboiler romances. This is about real passion – so, a lot more powerful and a lot more dangerous. Every self-appointed self-help guru out there is always telling you to ‘find your passion!’ and ‘follow your passion!’ as if this were the magic pill to guarantee you success and happiness. It just tells me that they’ve never felt real passion. They don’t tell you how much true passion hurts. They don’t tell you what kind of visions and madness it can induce in you. They don’t tell you how it sucks the life out of you when you lose your passion. They don’t tell you these things because they don’t know them.
When we’re young, we (mostly) all experience passions of varying strength. Passion in youth is closely tied with hormone surges, so they are often misidentified as sexual urges. Truth be told, it is hard to tell the difference when you’re in the thick of it. It feels like a burning flame in your gut, an unquenchable fire that feels horrible and scary and unbearably wonderful all at once. A person in the grip of passion runs fevers, runs races, talks incessantly, creates without rhyme or reason – they’re out of control because the passion is in control. It’s a grand and glorious and slightly insane way to live.
However, as we grow older, the hormone levels normalize, and the passions start to go away. We are taught by our society that we should accept this as a condition of maturity, a sign that we are becoming stable and trustworthy citizens. After all, people who are ruled by their passions are unpredictable and dangerous. Sane people don’t live that way, we are told – let it go. Society doesn’t mention the fact that artists, performers (and certain mathematicians and scientists) need passion to inspire their work. This is one reason why creatives are often seen as random and sometimes insane. To be a person who ‘follows his passions’ used to mean a troublemaker – it’s only been recently that so many have taken up the call for passion as an answer to boredom and mid-life crisis.
Many, if not most, people will be perfectly well served by reduced levels of passion. I don’t believe anyone should go completely without, because it adds so much color and joy to living. But to dash around like a madman would be very uncomfortable for most. Creatives, however, require the heat and electricity of grand passion in order to function. It’s like a fire that burns in your soul, igniting creativity. In older artists, it no longer appears as a roaring campfire, but as a bed of bright coals – not a lot of flash, but much hotter than the showy fire of youth. But it must be fed and maintained – if it’s once allowed to go out, it’s a hundred to one you’ll never get it lit again. That final extinguishing is a death knell for any artist.
My own fires very nearly went out. Through blind acceptance of society’s edicts and a series of faulty choices, I ended up throwing cold water on much of my own fire. The result was profound pain and spiritual discomfort, which I either ignored or misinterpreted as the encroachment of age. It has only been through study and the daily habit of writing that I have finally uncovered the truth of my condition. My task now is to feed the remaining coals and blow them back to life. Continuing to write every day, as well as adding the practice of making art whenever I can, is slowly bringing my passion up to useful levels again. I may burn my own fingers from time to time, and I’m creating a lot of smoke and fume in the process, but I’m happy to do it. I’m becoming creative once more.
If you want to know where your own passions lie, here’s a hint: compile a short list of the people you consider your heroes, then examine their lives. How did they find their path? What sorts of habits did they have? What did they give up? When you have all this information compiled, compare their facts to the facts of your own life. Chances are, you’ll find a lot of similarities – you’ll find differences too, but once you can see them, you can work on them. It will also narrow down your choices when it comes to life goals. Some things you already do will be compatible with your chief goal – many things will not be. Once you’ve worked out the broad aim points and expectations, it’s time for the rubber to meet the road. Start working, right now, on whatever it is you want to do. And understand one thing from the start – for the first bit (maybe quite a bit), you are going to suck at this. Don’t get discouraged, it happens to everybody. Nobody – not even your heroes – were good at their chosen work from the start. The one bit of useful advice that the gurus give all the time is this: never compare yourself to anyone’s end result, only compare yourself to who you were yesterday. And when the passion flares up in your soul again, revel in it – let it power your endeavors.
Don’t follow your passions, live in them. Don’t find your passion, as if it were something you had to figure out – you already know what it is. Feed it, tend it, burn with it. Living passionately, breathing fire, dancing with madness – it’s not a sane way to live. But you know what? Sanity is kinda overrated. And just remember, the future is not created by those who seek safety. The future belongs to those who burn with passion. Flame on.
pax et ama
bcd