Reading Rachel Foong‘s post, “Can You Live A Dispassionate Life“ got me thinking about what people tend to look for when they’re looking for what they’re either passionate about or what other people are passionate about.
While it is true that there are “passion indicators”, you signs that help us identify what people are passionate about, there are also incorrect signs to look for as passion indicators.
One of the challenges with identifying passion in others is that we don’t express our excitement and ourselves the same. Some people are loud and some remain as cucumbers and there’s hardly any change in their demeanor or outward expression but there’s excitement on the inside.
Passion is often mistaken for being loud. It can be. However, the ultimate expression of passion is a “product” made consistently with love. True passion is evidenced by grueling work it takes in expression whatever we’re passionate about.
For instance, an artist can only be said to be passionate about art through her suffering in producing it. Loud is not necessary ingredient.
Often passion is simplified and undermined to just “lighting up” when one talks about something. Nonsense. People can light up because they are passionate about something but it doesn’t mean they aren’t when they don’t “light up”.
The “lighting up” test can be true, but only partly. By using it as sole standard for people being passionate about something, is to cheapen what it means to be passionate.
True passion is love expressed through pain in doing something [Click to Tweet]
Someone cannot be said to be truly passionate about something they’re unwilling to bleed for. Passion is bleeding. It is giving of yourself something that takes from you. It can be beautifying the world through your pain.
Passion is not a beautiful thing. It is ugly. It is excruciating. It transcends just being happy about or for something it.
True passion is being so deeply affected by something that it sometimes saddens and angers you but you pursue it regardless because it is worth it. Passion is love.
Love appreciates and embraces the imperfect, while magnifying the beauty and good in its object [Click to Tweet]
Beautiful.
Passion can be expressed in many ways. Be sure that you’re not too quick to say you’re passionate about by using the wrong indicators in search of it. This applies to yourself as well as what you super impose on other people.
Your take?