Optimising Our Passions

We favour some things often beyond even our own known reason. We want others to know this joy that we’ve experienced – not thinking they’re different to us; confused are we when they wonder why we brought ‘this’ to them.

So much do we elevate these passions of ours at times and we truly wonder what’s wrong with people that they don’t feel at least similarly — that they can’t hear a song with the same wonder we do, or get the same significance out of a quote or piece of news that just captured our attention.

Checking Our Passions

God gives us our very own identity such that others don’t have to agree with us in our passionate understanding of a thing. This is good for them and for us. There’s no pressure to conform. For ourselves, then, we’re blessed and privileged with a very personal view of the world that requires not one single other person’s agreement or approval.

The very fact that we can and do have our passions and we’re free to have them and express them however we like — within bounds of the law and morality — is an enormous liberty for us all.

Sometimes, however, our passions go beyond where they should and they bend too far. We stand to lose our credibility and even friendships because our passion reaches an extreme level. Sometimes it gets beyond a joke and seriousness suddenly enters the equation.

Bringing in Some Needed Balance

None of us can subsist in life without much needed balance. When we’ve seriously lost our balance in one aspect of life and it surrounds a particular passion we’re commended for taking some time out to reflect.

Reflecting on balance is the exercise of wisdom and discernment over our lives. It’s helping us to determine where we’re at right now, based on the evidence we see, and it’s also helping us navigate to safer, less conspicuous ground. None of us, it would seem, likes negative attention — not deep down.

At last this comes down firstly to awareness — being honest with ourselves — and then having the courage to act, which again will require the honesty of accountability to follow through on what we’ve agreed with ourselves.

Positive Passions

When we’re passionate about things in positive ways they lead us to inspirational ends; both for ourselves and others. These are passions that make a difference in our world, like the admirable passion or developing a skill that is finely honed.

It seems these passions can be ‘bent’ a long way and they still do not appear out of place. They just accentuate the candour of people’s admiration, bringing enhanced value to their lives.

It is true insight to know the difference between those passions that impassion only us versus those that impassion the entire world.

© 2011 S. J. Wickham.