EYE ON THE PRIZE
Sunday Oct. 19, 2014
What drives us?
What keeps us up all night, what causes us to leap out of our beds before morning? Or to linger there for weeks …
What cannot rest?
Passion.
So many forms – ones we have, ones we wish we had – ones we collide with, ones we are over-run by, ones by which we are overcome, speechless, tireless, exhausted and constantly refilled with energy …
Affection, agony, anger, animation, ardor, dedication, devotion, distress, eagerness, ecstasy, excitement, feeling, fervour, fire, fit, flare-up, frenzy, fury, heat, indignation, intensity, joy, rage, rapture, resentment, sentiment, spirit, temper, warmth, wrath, zeal.
Have you ever wondered what makes this nuanced difference between things we like to do, want to do, have ambitions to do – and that special place on the other side of dotted lines where passion is the only word to explain it?
Doing things well, very well in fact, does not equal passion – unless it is doing things very well which we are passionate about. Easy and carefree for some, their life’s work for others.
Time is neither short, or not, because we believe we have enough or we believe we don’t.
If I wanted to be a ________, then all the time in world would never be enough. Imagine the life of someone doing something they hate. Worse, something they are truly gifted at but hate.
If I want to do ________ badly enough, there will be no time for other things. Of course there would be time for other things, but it would feel there wasn’t.
Absence of passion is drawing an empty heart.
Its opposites – not horrid, but in mediocrity, indifferently so.
Mark Kolke
column written/ published from Calgary
morning walk: 6C/43F, construction disruption still … but we wandered through and over, Gusta more settled – and less curious – than yesterday. Sunday calm on our streets, occasional rabbit distractions and Magpie taunts …
