The Price of Passion

Passion.

It’s something that everyone can sense but not fully describe. It’s like the wind in the trees: you can’t see it, exactly, but you can definitely see its effects. Or like an errant wave in the ocean: you don’t expect it, but the force can knock you off your feet and whisk you away whether you want it to or not.

I have always felt like passion is one thing that I am lacking in life. Everyone else that I meet seems to be SO INTO “their thing”, and their enthusiasm for that thing always sweeps me along until I, too, am passionate about that “one thing”. But, since the fire is only borrowed and not sourced from the coals of my own heart, it soon peters out once it is no longer being lit from the furnace of others.

To be honest, I’ve always been jealous of people with long-abiding passions. I wonder what it feels like to be so completely into something that you can lose hours of time consumed by it, and tell tales of how you discovered this innate source of life inside of you at 6 or 7 years old, bringing it to the forefront of your everyday journey into adulthood and still finding complete joy in enmeshing your soul with this thing to this day.

The one thing that I have learned from people with a passion, however, is that it is a jealous mistress; there is little to no time for anything else when you are listening to the sweet siren song of your fascination.

Perhaps this, then, is one source of my lazy river existence: I do not devote any substantial amount of time to one particular thing; instead, I like to treat life like my own personal book of short stories, exploring something completely different in each one, eager to discover the next plot and setting once the final page has been turned.

For the fires of fervor to remain lit, the stoker of said fire must constantly feed the flames with minutes from their life. I, however, am very protective of my minutes and have always hesitated to spend them on one thing, fearful that I would find those hours squandered with nothing to show for it. One doesn’t want to come to the end of their life and find that it was all for naught.

But.

What will I gain spending my life flitting from flower to flower, garden to garden? To be sure, there is a lot to be said for gathering the blossoms of experience, and I have loved each and every one of my adventurous blooms.

But lately I have been feeling dissatisfied with this shallow approach to life, and have found myself yearning for more depth.

Rather than spending my life gathering flowers that others have grown, I want to create something beautiful myself, something that other travelers can stop and admire on their own journeys. I want to find my passion.

The price of true passion, however, is time. One must devote enough hours to obtain the skills and knowledge necessary to actually create something that others will slow down enough to admire and/or even incorporate into their own lives, whether that is shoes, a fitness empire, life-changing novels, or hard-hitting podcasts.

This year, I am committing to building my passion for writing, one written word at a time. I will still thoroughly enjoy dipping my toe into the pool of random and exciting experiences, but I think it’s time for me to have some real faith in myself and my capabilities as a writer.

Passion is scary. But from what I’ve seen from other’s end results, oh so worth it.

Wouldn’t you agree?

-Hannah Elizabeth

PS-I’d love to hear from my readers–what is your passion??

PPS-If you enjoyed this, and think others would as well, please give a like or a share! It’s appreciated! :o)