It is said…and said…and said that the best and most fulfilling way to live our lives is with passion.
I see it on virtually every social media site (not so much on LinkedIn but, then, I don’t go there often) either in status update or graphics or something. There are untold numbers of books and what-have-you about living your life on your terms with verve and enthusiasm.
Only they don’t tell you exactly how to find this passion thing. It’s assumed that you have a passion for something. You might like to write, take photos, ski, hang glide, write code for killer apps. Whatever. You know you love to do it and you would do it for free. All day. Every day.
But, what about those of us who can’;t quite get a handle on it. We don’t really get revved up about much of anything.
Oh, sure. Maybe we did at one time. We were young and foolish and didn’t have much in the way of responsibility. We could pretty much do what we wanted and be safe in the knowledge that we could come home to a roof over our head and food on the table.
No kids. No spouse or partner. No credit card bills or car payment or mortgage. Life was good. If we wanted to backpack across Europe or try our hand at interning somewhere, well, that was just fine and dandy.
Reality Check
Then came a time that the Bank of Mom & Dad either ran out of money or cut off the credit spigot. Ooops. Now it was time to do something, er, independent. Now it was time to figure out just how, exactly, people made it in the world.
Around that time was when I lost sight of any passion I may have had…if I ever had it.
Yeah, there was a time that I thought I would really like to pursue this or that career path or avocation. But, as my mother was very fond of telling me, money doesn’t grow on trees. And she wasn’t made of money, either. So I needed to buckle down and figure out how to pay for living.
Other things got in the way, of course. Falling in and out of love with various women. Dealing with issues of drug and alcohol. Working dead end jobs just to pay the rent. Eventually, the passion was sucked out of me. Pure and simple.
I realized I needed to do whatever to make ends meet and that no amount of visualizing, affirmations or anything else was going to do that for me.
A lot of time has passed and I often wish I could live with passion (as Tony Robbins says at the end of everyone of his CDs). But, I’m getting older now and it’s not as easy as it sounds. Saying good-bye to a spouse, friends, job and everything else just to chase after some elusive feeling of fulfillment just doesn’t seem like a good idea.
