d16 narcissism + passion

DAY 16: Another picture of yourself

(Yeah I'm just a selfish narcissistic psycho freak... -song stuck in head-)

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What is passion? I guess it's a kind of motivation, something we really believe in, our values, something that drives us. But very few of us are actually naturally driven by something like that. Passion is something intangible, and it seems to come and go (for me at least). It's abstract, like love, so it's hard to hold onto. Yet we seem to have this idea as a society that passion is something good and that it is something that each of us should have. But the truth is that it's not really that simple. Just as we can't force ourselves to love someone we don't, and can't force ourselves to fall out of love with someone we do, we can't force ourselves to care about things we don't, especially to become 'passionate' (strong adjective) about something we just don't.

I don't really know why I decided to talk about it. I guess it just kinda came out as I was typing, but I haven't really been thinking about it lately. In the last few years I've experienced a fickle kind of passion, the kind that comes and goes. I don't know, sometimes I just lose all motivation to do anything, but later I look back and think, why didn't I care more? Sometimes I get really fired up. But later I look back and think, was it really worth it? Why did I care so much? And of course, there is no answer. It's something really intrinsic; no one else can judge us or tell us what we should be passionate about, it's just something that seems to happen.

Can passion be conditioned though? I mean I think it's possible that by doing something more, you eventually like it more and more (exposure effect/familiarity principle), but can it reach that level of passion if you didn't have some love for it initially? As someone with a lot of interests but no real passion, it's weird to think about. Especially at this age, when people expect you to have decided what you're going to do with the rest of your life. You can do anything you want to do. What are you passionate about? My answer is: pretty much nothing. But what am I interested in? Pretty much everything... So I was wondering, if I did a lot of something, would it make me more passionate about it? Or, would I just get sick of it?

For some people, passion is something they will have all their life. The doctors who love to save lives, the volunteer who does community work to see the happy faces of all those he or she has saved, the musician who lives in a flat worth less than the collection of guitars hanging on his or her living room wall. I think those people are really lucky, to have found something they love and care about so much. No matter how hard life gets nothing can take that love away from them. They will never really feel alone, because they are motivated.

For most of us though, passion is like a (passionate) one night stand (see what I did there? :D). You're on a high for a night, but after that you're back to your regular normal life. Passion comes and goes, sometimes we get really motivated about something, sometimes we just don't give a damn. When we don't give a damn, nothing seems to matter in the world. We feel alone, depressed, meaningless. Perhaps it is not crimes of passion that we should be worried about, but what happens when there is no passion at all.

“If there is no passion in your life, then have you really lived? Find your passion, whatever it may be. Become it, and let it become you and you will find great things happen FOR you, TO you and BECAUSE of you.” ~T. Alan Armstrong