by m.
Illustrations by: LDR + KidIllus
Passion. In my really early lifetime, I’ve heard this word countless of times. I’ve heard this from homeroom teachers, read it in books, talked about it with friends, and listened about this on various forums and conferences. Whenever someone tackles something related to the topic, they often talk about how“it keeps you going” – very far from the first definition that pops up when you google it. According to it, ‘Passion’ is “a strong and barely controllable emotion,” and believe it when google says that it’s a correct definition! But it’s also one of the many, many definitions it holds.
It’s really hard to write an article about it, too. Passion, funnily enough, is something I’m passionate about. In fact, I advocate it to my friends and family, and for good reason. I know that being after something you really love pulls you through the moments when you don’t even believe in yourself. But being able to put that into words… that’s something that the people behind the books I’ve read and the speakers that talked about this have achieved. And a recurring theme of the “passion” they’ve talked about is this: over and over again, it’s something they’re more than willing to give their life for.
Now, that’s something worth talking about.
Because of that, I’m not writing for the sake of being right and completely being factual. I want this article to give you a part of me. I hope by the end of this article, you could ask yourself this same question I faced years ago: “What am I really passionate about?”
This is where the deep dig starts.
Now, what is passion?
It’s bizarre how special you can see something. When you start to see value in a process, a profession, or a craft, it could give you a reasonable enough excuse to give it a try. When people do this, they try to gauge whether it’s something they could do or not. Moreover, if they’re enjoying what they do.
When most people do this in one thing, they usually lose interest.
But there’s always one thing for one person. And when that one person finds that one thing, they don’t lose interest. Instead, what happens is that it doubles. In fact, everything they’ve invested in the craft, profession, or process feels like everything they’ve worked on comes back to them a hundredfold, with one important factor: satisfaction.
Not only that, but you find an even deeper, more complex force that push you to better your craft. You see how it could contribute and add value to the things that you count as ‘important.’ You see how it could help you say the things you want to say.
Most importantly, you see how it helps the people around you, and most importantly, you.
That is what I would like to call purpose.
And when passion and purpose intersect, nothing could separate you from your craft.
But as with most things, it’s bizarre how valuable you can see something and have somebody call it ‘worthless’ in front of your beaming face.
The universe you want to help seems to have their heads against yours.
So what happens after that?
In a lot of ways, passion is something that pulls you to something that you fell in love with. It’s what gives you the drive to be curious and be interested, even at the times you’re not that interested and curious.
You could say that passion is the biggest driving force of the industry.
But most people won’t get you. They’ll see the passion in you, but they don’t dig in to know why. They won’t get to understand what’s running amok inside your head. They want to see results. Profit. So when they judge you, they judge what you’ve done and how much you’ve done it.
It’s not unreasonable, but it’s disheartening to people especially when they’re starting out.
It’s bizarre how you’re still reading this, and you actually agree with these hard truths. But passionate people don’t care about approval, because whether people agree or not, they know what actually matters: to them, and to the people, regardless of their knowledge of it. They will do whatever it takes to make a change when the world needs one.
But I think what matters the most to passionate people is the reason why they do what they do.
Because in this time and age, people can fake a lot of things. They can fake motivation, authenticity, and situations. A lot of things can be faked… including passion and purpose. People do that because they want success. They turned the path and the ideal of success into something quantifiable, and in turn, boiled it down into a formula of things that motivate a person.
It’s ridiculous.
Trust me. Fake things and imitations can’t bring you the same satisfaction of success.
In light of that, I want you to check why you do what you do, and whether you actually like what you’re doing or not. So I’ll leave a few questions.
Are you passionate because of the return of profit looks good when things take off? How about the fact that it could bring you glory and fame when you actually succeed? Is it because you find your worth in what you do, and you want people to see that you are valuable? Is it because you have something to prove? How about doing it for the sake of proving yourself?
Or is it about helping people see the same vision you saw? Is it about realizing our existence here on Earth better? How about doing things for the glory of God? Is it about helping people? Do you want to make a change by starting an internal revolution? How about an external revolution? Is it about moving a country, or moving the world?
Do you have something you want to see realized?
There are a lot of things that could drive you. It could either be wrong or right. It could either leave you hanging, or it could bring you higher.
But the most important thing about passion is that you drive where it goes.
It could drive you, but you’re the only one who can tell where you want to go. Don’t ever let passion be passion for the kicks. Your dreams will only crash and burn.
But if you’ve got a vision of where you’re headed, and you know how, and you have enough drive to get there, there are plenty of things you could do. Things will move. Things will change. Most importantly, things would be in motion, and in turn, let you know that things will never stay the same.
You’re the only one that could bring out the change in what you see. But you can’t drive something without fuel.
That, my friends, is passion.
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