Passion

Have you ever met someone and almost immediately they sucked the life right out of the room? It's like they're an energy vampire robbing the juice of life out of your bones. They're portable black holes devoid of all passion.

Some are filled with spite and angry with the world. They feel like nothing is their fault, and that the world has been cruel to them. As such they dole out a healthy measure of spite as well as robbing your energy.

Others are mournful and mope around, perpetually sad. I have compassion for these folks, because they've replaced the natural passion we have in life with a passion for sadness. They can't see beyond their sadness and it's overwhelmed them and is slowly consuming them and everyone around them in their sorrow. Since it's better to feel something than nothing, they get absorbed by their sadness.

A lot of people over time lose their passion. Since it's gone, they have to replace it somehow. Usually they live vicariously through the lives of others, and this is why they like gossip, watch some form of entertainment, and slowly and irrevocably lose what feeble flame of passion is left.

If it continues too long, the process might be impossible to reverse.

If you fit into either of these categories or know someone who's lost their passion, then there is some Hope. Once there were things that excited you. Some aspect of living thrilled you by pursing it. It might have been the thing that most enhanced your life, but because of work and other activities you pushed it away. As you did it less and less, life seemed flavorless and bland. You missed it at first, but then you shrugged your shoulders and became so disconnected from life that you became listless.

Believe it or not, unless you find some way to get re-energized or do that for someone else, then you might be written off by most people. It's difficult to be around you.

Because being around others gives us friendship and romance, even if we could do our passion as much as we wanted, we would feel crushing loneliness.

Shhhhh. It's a secret. Most people are lonely. They feel misunderstood, and yet they spend zero amount of time trying to understand others.

Somehow, you have to start doing activities that renew your passion and begin trusting people again to evaporate the loneliness around you.

It's easier to fix yourself first rather than others. If you insist that THEY get better, then you might wait forever until you turn to dust. Strangely, the more you fix yourself, the less bad they seem. In fact the more that you live into your passions and polish the rough edges, often you feel more compassionate and reach out to them. It might be that you recognize the same loneliness and lack of passion in them, and because bettering the self in a healthy way promotes altruism that you want to help them wake up.

You have to start somewhere. Most people can't begin again until they decide they want to get better. Then once they do, they begin to act passionately about that process.

Don't do things just because you have to. Do some things because you WANT to. Those are your passions.

Some of the things we DESIRE are not good for us. What we really want are passionate things that build us up. Other things may seem to make us happy, but mostly they're addictions that momentarily make us forget our sad passionless state.

Why do people have affairs? They want the romance that comes usually from being around passionate people, often young and still innocent or untouched by a lack of passion. Because that seldom lasts, it's doing something that's an addiction that can't fulfill us ultimately.

People like to go to restaurants because momentarily they are taken care of, treated with respect, offered a diverse array of flavors and sensations, and then can leave without doing the dishes or cleaning up. How much more fulfilling it would be to be passionate, raise your food, forage for it in the meadows and forests, work along side a beautiful person, harvest the food, then prepare it together with their company, and wash dishes in the kitchen together and play and kiss them at the sink and later in their arms?

You still can have all of that. Even if you think it's too late, if you decide that you need it, you can try to repair yourself, then reach out anew.

Yes, we are all getting older. We don't look the same that we did at 17, 25, 35, 45, etc.

Shhhh. It's a secret. Most of you are beautiful, you just forgot that you were. I haven't met any ugly children, not ever. I may have met a spoiled child, but in the right environment and with proper care, they grew into beautiful adults.

What changed? I think it's mostly a lack of passion, and then a redirection of the short term addictions that transformed them with the weight of these addictions. They became increasingly lonely since their activities repelled others. At some point they became cognizant that they no longer were like everyone else and so became ostracized.

It's a scary word, because it implies that someone is a Master over us, but that addiction might be defined as sin. Rather than get hung up on that word, think that it's just a word for an addiction which is a very real phenomena that you can identify and eliminate.

There's still time to fix it as long as you still are breathing.

Because those addictions give immediate pleasure, but usually impart pain the rest of the time, then they create shame and guilt. Why not try doing less addictive things and more healthy passion filled life affirming things that make you feel better?

The primary reason an addiction exists is intensity of feeling. The only way to break the cycle is to replace something else that's intense in pleasure that overcomes the transitory pleasure of the addiction. That activity is usually a healthy passion.

Because the healthy passions cannot be sold to us by corporations, they sell us whatever addictive things they can make or generate. If you don't give away your time, talent, and treasure, they can't rob you of them.