Knowing Your Passion

I believe we are all born with a passion; something that comes already hardwired into our being that gravitates us toward something in particular.

Others do not believe this. (That’s okay, they just haven’t tapped into theirs yet!)

Case in point, me. When I was younger, I spent my spare time writing stories. I actually purchased blank journals and filled the pages with my characters and musings. I was fortunate enough to be the editor of our high school poetry collection book. I loved anything that had to do with literature, writing, or reading. So, why did I grow up and become something else? Life, I guess. I got married just short of finishing college, had a baby, fell into a job, had another baby, and before I knew it, that passion for writing got suffocated by all the other things happening in my life. I like to imagine that it just went dormant. Like a rose does in the winter. Boy, was my winter long!

So, here I am, some years later. I have my posse of semi-grown children, my same job that’s become non-challenging in every way, and my passion that has somehow floated back to the surface. Spring has sprung! Since the early signs of the new season, I’ve taken time and written a few books. Have I enjoyed it? I can’t tell you enough how much I’ve enjoyed it. They say time flies when you’re having fun. Well, I feel like only minutes have passed for these last two years. I’ve never felt so complete.

On the other side of the coin, I have friends who feel as if they have no passion for anything. They could merely work anywhere doing anything (within reason) and feel no different. Nothing pulls them, nothing drives them. How unfortunate. I’m not sure they would feel this way if they’d allow themselves to examine what exited them as children. That was the time when they could reflect on what attracted them. That’s when they knew themselves the best. Youth is a haven for endless possibilities. It seems as adults we have to wait until we’re unconscious to rekindle our passion. Researches say that the best ideas come to us while we’re asleep. I guess it’s because we’re at our most relaxed, with no outside distractions.

I suppose I was willing to forge ahead with doing what I was doing, had I not been tugged at by an inner voice to write again. It’s amazing, too, the stories I read about how some people find their passions very late in life and how much happier they are for having done so. And, after realizing it, they can see in their past how they’d missed or even denied the signs. I’ve run into some people lately and have told them of my new direction in life and I’m amazed how each one, independently, have told me they’re not surprised by it. It seems I had mentioned to them how I loved to write, at one time or another, in our friendship. I was astonished! I never knew I had been leaving breadcrumbs for myself to find my true passion in life.

I guess I can consider myself blessed. I know what I love to do and I’m able to do it. Some stay lost their whole lives in not being able to see what it is they were born with a passion to do. Or, is it that they’re not willing to take a risk and step out of their comfort zone and do it?