I am on a train reading a magazine. It talks amongst other things about finding your passion or following your passion, I skip the article as this subject has always grated me. I realized I was struck by passion envy.
I look around and I start to ponder whether these people sitting around me had the slightest idea when they were little what they wanted to be when they grow up, did they reach their destination? Did they find their passion? Did they think they knew for certain where they were headed? Did they decide to get off sooner?
A little girl keeps running up and down the aisle as if she was preparing for an important race. She is making a lot of noise stomping through the aisle and it seems to be annoying few passengers, disturbing their peace. A man puts his headphones on to block her out. What is she going to be when she grows up? An athletic runner? A troublemaker?
When I was growing up the advice was to find a good career with a good wage and stay there until retirement, then maybe you might consider following your passion …travelling…writing… However, you had to hope you didn’t get a heart attack cutting your retirement cake.
Now the advice is to follow your passion which in a way is as scary as finding a good career for some of us who still don’t know what their passion is.
The little girl gets scolded by her mom, they need to get off and she is still running up and down…
Passion is a loaded word, like happiness. Words are labels that limit the expansion of our true self. Each word is merely a projection of the meaning we put into it. A word is like an empty glass we fill it with transparent, colourful, murky liquid it all depends on our state of mind.
When we have “passion envy” we misunderstand what it means to be passionate about something, because we put the word “passion” on a pedestal, to be passionate seems elusive like happiness, a kingdom, that only a few lucky ones can reach.
E.E. Cummings wrote: “Once we believe in ourselves we can risk curiosity, wonder, spontaneous delight or any experience that reveals the human spirit.”
What if being passionate meant to believe in ourselves, to embrace who we are and to express our creativity in whichever form it might be.
When we put pressure on ourselves to fit into the perfect definition of the word “passion” “happiness” “beautiful” “perfect” we set ourselves up for failure. It is like turning a piece of the puzzle, we’re doing, in all directions to try to make it fit into the picture until we realize we have the wrong piece in your hand.
When we express our creativity, we feel a sense of contentment. Creativity can take many forms in our lives, creativity is a way of thinking about what we do, it is the journey, not the destination. Creativity is making a nice dinner for friends, finding the right solution to a problem or helping someone else achieve something. Creativity is the blood running through our veins. When we are creative we feel a sense of clarity, and we are more likely to make right choices.
We realize that we are the art and the artist as Gary Zukav and Linda Francis said in their book The Mind of the Soul – Responsible Choice
If we string together each moment of contentment that our creativity gives us we embrace our self and we allow our authentic light to shine through.
7 steps to embrace who you are and gain clarity:
- Clear your mind of the static noises: we must make some time every day to clear our mind whether it is through meditation or going for a walk, it opens ourselves to new possibilities. The only way a plane can take off is if the runway is clear.
- Let go of perfection: seeking perfection is the antithesis of inspiration, we are the most in awe with nature when we see rugged places, trees with different shapes, we need to embrace the harmony imperfection creates.
- Accept your flaws: we have no trouble accepting that a tree is barren in the winter because we know it is not the full picture, in the spring it will be covered with beautiful leaves or vibrant flowers, so we accept the barren tree as part of the bigger picture. Obsessing over our flaws is not seeing the bigger picture, the truth is we have strengths and weaknesses that is the bigger picture.
- Reach out when you need help: reaching out is accepting our vulnerabilities, it is being brave. It is accepting we don’t need to suffer alone.
- Invest time in developing your strengths: by strengthening our strengths our weaknesses won’t seem as important, we need to feed our soul just as we need to feed our body.
- Trust your intuition: trusting your intuition is shutting off the little voice inside your head, it is making a conscious choice to ignore the static noises, the imperfection, and the flaws.
- You have the answers! Believe that you have a choice, Anais Nin said: “we don’t see things as they are, we see things as we are”. The more we believe in ourselves the clearer the image of the world reflected to us becomes.
“A rock pile ceases to be a rock pile the moment a single man contemplates it, bearing within him the image of a cathedral.”
Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
“Happiness is not a matter of intensity but of balance, order, rhythm, and harmony.”
Thomas Merton
Originally published at ginamcintosh.weebly.com