Happiness and Passion
Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world. ~Harriet Tubman
I have hit a certain point in my life that calls for reflection, you see I’ve been relatively successful. I have achieved many of the things in my life I had hoped to achieve, in some ways I’ve exceeded rational expectations for someone coming from my beginnings. I have a good career, respect, I’ve traveled, I speak a couple of languages and have had a range of experiences that would make many people enviable. I enter at this point in my life what many people would call middle age and it brings on a certain of level of contemplation. You see at this point in life you have a history, you have made mistakes, but more importantly you have made lots and lots of decisions. All decisions have consequences and once you have enough time, you can see what the consequences of those decisions have wrought.
At this age you begin thinking about purpose and mortality, you delve into a strong mixture of fear and a need for seeing a purpose to your life. Within the depths of this I completely and totally understand the two outcomes, the two paths that lay open to me in life. Those paths are either hedonism or significance. The first path is the cliché of the mid-life crisis, the stereotypical chasing of material things and pleasures. There is a pointlessness you can find in life if you look hard enough and a hedonistic response does not seem unreasonable facing that reality.
However, if you take a look beyond yourself, use a wider lens if you will, think about a longer timeline, I don’t thing hedonism is the answer. You see either path calls for passion and passion spent on hedonism has always felt more than a little empty to me, I took that train in my twenties, I didn’t like where it went. So it’s time for passion in the pursuit of significance and for many people this is an easy call, they pour their passion into their children. Raising their children becomes the passionate pursuit for significance in their life and quite a worthy one in my opinion.
So my question tonight, and for me, at this time in my life as someone without children, is where to put my passion? So my question for you tonight my friends is the same, what is your passion and how is it directed, find that and happiness won’t be too far behind. As always, have a happy day my friends ~ Rev Kane
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