Passion

To live a joyous and fulfilling life, in my opinion, one must have a passion.  I tell my kids (a 14 year old daughter and a 9 year old son) this often.  Usually, I say something like “school and education are the most important things in your lives and where your focus should be, BUT find a passion – something in which you can “lose” and “apply” yourself.”  Actually, I am not so sure that having a passion isn’t the most important thing. 

For some, there is one - and only one - passion.  For example, I have a dear friend that golfs.  He golfs almost every day.  He joined a prestigious country-club so he could play on the nicest course in town.  He and his family schedule their vacations around his ability to play golf.  Then, when he goes on his “guy” trips – you guessed it, he goes golfing.  I am not criticizing – my friend derives much joy from his passion, and it is apparent from being around him that he is genuinely happy.  For others, work is their passion.  They work tirelessly to succeed at their vocation, to build a business, an empire.  For others (like me) there may be many and varied passions and they will vacillate from one to the next and then back. 

Looking back over my forty-something years, I have had many passions.  My slightly obsessive compulsive personality leads me to throw myself completely into my passions.  For a period of time, I was passionate about running.  It started small, with short runs around the neighborhood.  However, like with any true passion, it grew … and grew … and grew.  Before I knew it, my whole day, including work, was organized so that I could train.  I began tracking every mile, my pace and my heart-rate.  I entered and ran races of varying distances and finally a marathon.  Over time, this passion morphed to triathlons.  Then, I was running, swimming and biking my way through life, meeting new people and traveling to new places.  And, there have been many more: golf, tennis, surfing and Jeep Wranglers (I know, a Jeep is a weird passion to have, but I love them and if I had a 3 car garage I would own one today).  Passions are different than responsibilities and one must be careful to not let a passion become an obsession over which there is little or no control, and that ultimately interfere with responsibilities.  I sometimes have this tendency. 

To the point of this blog – in early 2009 I became interested in sailing.  While I grew up on the Texas Gulf coast, I had not been exposed to sailing – other than a few times on a friend’s sunfish and then our whole goal was to get up enough speed to capsize the boat.  Now, in my early 40s, living hundreds of miles from the closest ocean, I had a desire to really learn to sail … A YACHT!  I did not know it at the time, but my interest would soon become a passion … A Quest to Sail.