On Passion

There is no physical disease quite like the sickness of losing one’s passion.

I’m not referring to passion in the “gung-ho” and overly romanticized sense. But passion in the sense of suffering, or self-sacrifice for the mitigation of the kind of suffering that is life punctuated by death.

But passion is important because it focuses unbridled potential.

I’ve been told or otherwise heard told that we ought to unlock our true potential. That the very concept of responsibility is to realize one’s full capacity and capability as an individual.

The problem I have with this view of potential — that it is your duty to fulfill your potential, so to speak — is that it assumes a very linear and frankly simplistic understanding of what potential represents.

Insofar as potential refers to that which could be. Then potential is boundless and lacks any definitive shape. In essence, your potential could be anything.

You could be a nurse, a police officer, a lawyer, a chef. You could become anything. And with all due respect to humanity, who at the end of the day is truly in charge of deciding what is to become of you other than yourself?

No — responsibility is more complex than a straightforward realization of potential, simply because potential itself is not a straightforward matter.

And that is the beauty or purpose of passion.

Because passion knows no rationality. It is inarguably more powerful than rational thought. It extends beyond the borders of service-level agreements and quarterly earnings. It embarrasses the prospect of an openly rational pursuit of financial gain for the sake of financial gain.

Because passion is indeed what drives us. Not merely as a means of motivation, although that is definitely important.

But passion is where mortality becomes forgotten. Passion is where we no longer care if we die. Not because we have given up on life. But because we have given our life to others.

Terar dum prosim. “May I be consumed in service.”

No doubt, there is something to be said about doing things that you love and immersing yourself with work that doesn’t feel like work because it is something you are “passionate” about.

But at a certain point, you must ask yourself: is passion entirely a self-serving cause? Or is there a purpose to passion that yearns to benefit others?

Is passion in fact meant to be filled with fun and enjoyment?

I believe what truly drives us to do something with our lives (because why are we to assume that anything should be done at all?) — to make something of ourselves — isn’t as simple as catering to interest. What motivates us to get out of bed each morning is the understanding, conscious or unconscious or both, that we will eventually die.

In death, you must wonder: what is the point then of life?

Why are we put on this tiny planet among thousands of planets, in a galaxy among millions of galaxies… if only to vanish in the end?

Such is the primary symptom of that sickness which is the misplacement of one’s passion.

The eerie feeling in the morning when you reluctantly open your eyes and criticize your navigation — “what the hell am I doing with my precious time?”

It’s the forecast of regret that looms overhead as you dissolve into resentment in the middle of a group work session for a marketing strategy you care nothing about.

And ironically, that is perhaps where passion will find you again.

When the thought of going to work on Monday leads to a nauseating Sunday.

When you’d be open to contracting a respiratory virus just to abandon your post.

When you can no longer connect the dots between your work and your values, no matter how creative you are.

That is where passion will prey upon you like an overzealous missionary and violently shake you awake — “you are wasting your life away doing this.”

Passion is an unreasonable lover, if only because it is not to be reasoned with but followed instead. Passion does not compromise — it only inflicts more pain the more you try to ignore it. It strengthens your suffering the more you look away. It will choke you with despair until you change course. Or it will say “fuck this, I’m going home” and leave a void in your spirit that no amount of money can fill.