Practical Passions
Sometimes my mind sticks on my childhood friend Truman, who was made famous in the neighborhood for coming home with a total of two broken legs, three sprained ankles, five lost fingernails, and seemingly infinite blood-soaked shirts. He once came home with a severe head injury that deluded him into believing he was in Disney World and not lying on the floor of my Chicago kitchen with a wet rag draped over his eyes. What little his mother and I could make out of his garble, we pieced together that he had fallen off a ten-foot ramp while skating and cracked his head on the concrete.
When he walked into my home unannounced after 6 years, fresh skid marks on his belly, I had to ask. “Why do you still let yourself get hurt like that?”
“Skating’s always been my passion, Grace,” he said, and sat down at my kitchen table.“Without it, my life would be meaningless.”
To be blunt, I didn’t understand. I thought he was an idiot.
I like to believe I am a passionate person. I have a passion for obscure novels about 1940’s America, neon lights, contour drawings and expensive yogurt. Although I am deeply enamored with these things and I enjoy them when I can, I wouldn’t say they give my life meaning. If push came to shove, I could live without them. I’m also passionate about my schoolwork, my relationships, and my job. I pour most of my time, money, and effort into cultivating these, and they make me happy, although sometimes they are stressful.
Passion insinuates an emotional tie, no matter how large or small, that connects a person to another thing, activity, or person. And although passions cannot be chosen, they have the ability to bring about fulfillment, happiness, and achievement with the risk of emotional harm.
Simple passions include casual hobbies and the little things one enjoys out of life, such as feeling a gentle breeze on their skin, or the taste of warm chocolate on your tongue. Nobody would die because the model airplane store next to their house shockingly doesn’t open on Sundays, or because you ran out of blue acrylic paint the day you wanted to paint an ocean. The apocalypse wouldn’t start if someone who enjoys the sun encountered a rainy day, or the dog you usually pet on the way to work got a haircut and isn’t as soft as usual. The denial of simple passions, while annoying, aren’t emotionally or physically destructive. These passions are purely nice and enjoyable, as they only scratch the surface levels of our emotions.
More complex passions are tied to practical achievement and are often the product of dedication. Any hobby or simple pleasure can become a vocation, and thereby become a complex passion. Someone who enjoys cooking can be a chef, and likewise, someone who enjoys eating that food can be a taste tester. Complex passions, as I’ve chosen to dub them, are passions practically applied to daily life. They also come with more risk than simple passions. For example, say my passion was to make furniture, and I poured my entire life savings into a furniture store. If that furniture store went under, I would be emotionally and financially crushed, because I invested so much of myself into it. Complex passions carry the weight of success or failure and have the ability to bring great joy and great defeat.
Deep passions are the passions and connections we form with other people, and that we ultimately depend upon for our great emotional happiness. I’m not talking solely about romantic relationships, but friendships and family relationships as well. These deep passions are the product of dedication, trust, love, care, and familiarity; they are what we pour ourselves into, what we would do anything for, and what we can’t imagine living without. The people we are passionate for have the ability to lift our spirits on our hardest days, but they also have the power to hurt us most. There are few greater joys than time spent with our best friends with whom we feel bonded, even if all you’re doing is laying around at home. The people we would do anything for, and can’t imagine living without. We truly want the best for the people we are passionate about, and we love them. We tell them our secrets, our insecurities, and cry on their shoulders, cognizant they could use our vulnerability against us at any moment — that is the great risk of passion.
However, it is possible to mistake obsession for passion, as the line often blurs. Passion can lead to a sense of happiness or fulfillment, whereas obsession cannot. Obsession, although an emotional tie to a thing, activity, or person is innately illogical. Obsession consumes the mind, rather than making it an enjoyable place to be. Obsession can sometimes be the result of delusion, like the effects of erotomania, that led John Hinckley Jr. to attempt to assassinate president Reagan due to his obsession with Jodie Foster. Obsession cannot lead to fulfillment, whereas passion can. For example, one can have a passion for physical fitness and can exercise daily, eat right, go to the gym, and maybe work as a personal trainer, but that is not the same as being obsessed with physical fitness. An obsession with physical fitness can lead to the use of steroids, spending all day at the gym to achieve a “perfect body” that is more or less unattainable making all results disappointing. The same can be said for people who suffer from body dysmorphia. Obsession is believing that one cannot exist without the object of their affection (ie: a celebrity they’ve never met, a perfect body, etc.), whereas passionate people realize that although it would be hard, we will survive if we give up our passions.
When thinking about passion my mind jumps to the most passionate people I know. It jumps to the wrestlers in my life who ruthlessly cut weight, and endure bizarre diseases cultivating in unsanitary mats. It jumps to the authors who spend hours a day holed up in front of their computer screens speaking to no one. It jumps to on-screen romances of unbreakable loves.
It jumps to people who mold their lives around what they love. It jumps to people who are happy. It jumps to Truman coming home bloodied and concussed because skating fulfills him. Passion is nothing more than invested happiness. Our passions are what make us who we are and although they have the power to hurt us, they make our lives worth living.