My mission in life is not merely to
survive, but to thrive; and to do so with some passion, some compassion, some
humor, and some style. -Maya Angelou
So many associate Passion with
sexuality and gender, but passion is something way deeper than that, for
sure. Passion is enthusiasm you can hardly contain, is an
excitement right to the marrow of your bones, is doing something with great joy
and exuberantly. Passion is emotional,
yes, and can be negative as many of us, who have lived long enough to finally
sort it out, and can have you act negatively towards person, place or thing.
Passionate people get things
done. They are people who champion
others that do so as well. Creativity,
for many, is a passion. It is for me,
for sure. Some people become obsessive,
and this is a destructive passion. Someone always suffers when passion becomes
a negative.
What you focus on, with great
concentration and with great admiration with a zeal that makes your soul sing,
is the best. We thrive. We dive into activities that are for the good
of everyone, let alone ourselves. We
gather the skills to improve on what we feel passionate about. We work hard at it. We do not give up easily and we see failure
as a new opportunity. We have goals,
even small steps towards a higher goal and that bar moves forward so that we
are continually on an adventure that thrills us. We sense a deep and abiding sense of
achievement and self-validation from merely involving every bit of ourselves in
a project of some kind.
We push positive boundaries
because we are enthralled at what we are active in. We are not excessive nor are we anxious about
what we are doing. It fills our heart
with pure joy, pure peace, and pure sense of fulfillment. It is a sense of harmony with all
things. We know the tingle of
satisfaction, a fire in our belly, when we are engrossed in a project. But, we must not expect passion all the
time. Creativity needs a rest,
betimes. We can get addicted to that
passion, very easily. Remember, passion
should come from within, not externally driven.
To experience authentic passion,
one must do what one loves to do. We all
need some kind of thing that gives us hope for something else, something new,
something that has us want to do more.
As an artist, a poet, a cook, a creative person, I know that practice
makes for near perfection. We are more
driven to things that are not monotonous and so we change things up to try to
drive our talents further, to drive us to the thing that causes fire in the
belly. (Note; this is not butterflies of
another passion).
In a way, following our passion is
to get lost in a beautiful space. It
takes us easily and surely out of our comfort areas. We dare to do, while in the midst of
following our passion, things we may never dare to do in our other-life. While
we experiment, we actually find things we do not like doing, and therefore,
more clearly define what we do like to do.
We become more connected with true Self as our passions become
clearer. So often we get lost in the
mundane. As we age, the mundane can come
to visit more often than not. We need
that spark that starts a fire in our belly.
In my drawing, I come as close as
I can to doing a simple illustration under tutelage of James Burke's style of
art journaling.
What things cause you to feel
passionate? What starts a fire in your
belly? Can you journal that? Yes, you can!
©Carol Desjarlais 9.15.19
No comments:
Post a Comment