As a little kid, we’re taught to follow our passion. We’re taught to invest our time into the things that bring us the most joy. We’re taught to be kids. But somewhere along the way, we lose sight of that. We learned to shrink our individuality for the sake of others comfortability. The art that we used to love is replaced with bland creations of the world. So my question is, how do we go back to being kids? How do we go back to being passionate about the things that used to bring us the most joy?
I have pondered over this question for some time. I read books, listened to podcasts and talked with friends, but none of that helped me understand how do we go back to finding our passion. In my case, it took a heartbreak and a year of self-preservation before I began to understand my passion. When I was kid, I loved to write. I loved to create these stories where I with the help of my non-fictional friends would journey across the galaxy and embark on quests that only the imagination of a child could conjure. I would write these non-fictional stories that would translate to my fictional life. Writing helped me to escape a world that I did not understand nor did it understand me.
As I grew older, I began to shift away from my heroic quests. I stopped writing and began assimilating to the world around me. Years past me by and eventually, I began dating. Similar to life before then, I did as I was told. I never strayed away from that. I journeyed into this relationship with the hopes of rekindling my passion for adventure. I was wrong. This past year, has taught more about myself than all of the years before it.
A few months back I found a story I had written years ago. The handwriting was decent, but it was the words that left me mesmerized. On the front of the booklet, it was titled “To the boy with a million dreams”. In that moment, I realized two things. The first, I was a kid ahead of his time. I’m not sure any other first-graders could single handedly fly a rocket ship. Two, the passion that had been subsided some years ago had been rekindled in that very moment.
It was at the moment, I made the promise to that little kid who dreamed of adventure that I would never extinguish his flame again. I would embrace my passion everything it comes with. For each of us, our passions are different. We cannot find our passions in someone else. We are own passion seekers and its high time we start embracing that.
