When people hear the word passion, it often evokes images of hot, intense, burning flames thanks to the context that the word is often used in, but that image association is not necessarily true.
Passion is more of a “calm” type of energy that permeates us which has the capability to burst into white hot flames if the situation warrants it, because if you think about it, if you apply the definition of being intense all the time to passion, it becomes really hard to be in that “state” all the time. There comes a point where you become exhausted and the flames die out. That’s why passion is not really a constant intense state, but more of a calming form of energy that continually cycles and permeates our mind and body.
With that being said, it’s easy to understand why it’s often written that passion gets you through the tough times. If passion was a brief intense moment of hot energy, it would only last for that moment of time. The fire would quickly use up all the fuel and it would subsequently die out. Passion is steady and everlasting. It can never be put out by anything outside of it. It makes up a big portion of the “essence” of persistence as it constantly proves to be a never ending source of fuel to help keep you moving forward.
Passion also invokes curiosity which ultimately invokes the desire to learn as well. If you’re passionate about something, there is something within you that longs and yearns to find out everything you can about it. You develop an unquenchable thirst for knowledge about your passion.
Books start flying open. Magazines start to pile up. Articles are saved. CDs are listened to. This will often provide more fuel to the fire of your passion, keeping it burning for a longer period of time.
And as we grow more knowledgeable about our passion, we feel the need to express it – to let it out in any way, shape, or form, and often in a very creative manner. We feel the urge to talk about it, to paint it, to write or sing about it – any type of expression so long as it gets out of us. It’s as if our passion is a burning sensation deep within our bones that continues to grow hotter until we give it some form of release from within so we can cool ourselves down.
And you can really tell from any sort of creative work, whether it’s a book, article, painting, song, video, speech etc., whether there is any passion behind it that was used to create it. It often stands out even if it’s not very noticeable because even if we can’t really “see” it, we can “feel” it.
That notion of “feeling” leads us to the recognition that passion “charges” us. And you can really see this in some people. They’re very animated, full of energy, and could go on all day. For others, it’s more of a “quiet” passion, but regardless of the type of person, you can easily tell if a person has it, if a person is “charged” with it. You can just feel it in their presence or you can tell from just looking deep within their eyes. It’s hard exactly to put into words how we know for sure, but we do. We just do.
Passion has the power to create, to literally transform itself into matter through our creative outlets. And what’s more, because of it, we start having a strong sense about who we are on the inside and what we’re all about and it’s as if we become like a solid planet that in turn, makes everything else orbit around it. Our thoughts, beliefs, philosophies, actions, friends, and ultimately our entire lifestyle – it all slowly begins to revolve around our passion. It creates a foundation where everything in our lives can be built upon and we know it’s a solid foundation to build upon in the first place because it is our passion.
Our passion also serves as a homing device, attracting those people who share the same “frequency” as us. It becomes easy for us to relate to these people and the conversations that are held are much more richer, the interaction much more “fluid”, and the rapport and camaraderie, pleasant beyond description because these people “get” us. And through this interaction with those who share the same passion as us, our passion grows stronger, akin to how iron sharpens iron.
Passion creates life, not in the biological sense, but in the sense of giving that other spark to create a higher life, rather than one of mere existence.
Read the lives of those who have lived with passion and you will see all the traits discussed in this article. You will see a constant source of calm energy that they drew upon, you will see their curiosity, their appetite for learning, their creative expressions of their passions, how their thoughts, actions, beliefs, associations, ultimately their entire life was built around their passion, resulting in them being the few on this planet that have truly lived, in every sense of the word.
The power of passion indeed.
