I have been thinking about this a lot today. I have no real passion in my life. I love my wife with passion. My family is wonderful. But I have no real passion for anything else. Work is now a job. I enjoy reading history and playing games on my computer. Baseball and the boys sports are great fun. But none of the that is something I would call a passion. I am not sure if I have ever had a real passion.
I loved playing baseball as a kid up until high school. I was not that good but I enjoyed playing. I did not burn to be playing. There was no passion to do it everyday. High school brought band and history. Both were great fun and I put a lot into them both. I again did not have enough talent for music and did not put the time into my writing to make history work.
I have enjoyed some part of all my jobs. I really like talking and interacting with customers, guest, clients, etc but I am not a people person, just ask my friends. I am a great problem solver and organizer. I do well when writing out policies and procedures but it drives me nuts to do it. I read one of those find your perfect job books and it said find your passion. Well that helped a lot. Okey it gave me the idea for this blog.
I think this may be the reason for part of my end of year blues. Each year I get older and still no passion. The closest idea of passion I have is for politics but is that really a passion or just my liking to argue? Oh well. Any feed back would be helpful.
Jim. I know what you mean. I also had a "job" and told my family many times how very lucky they were to have found something that they would have done for free if it was necessary. I finally reconciled that with the knowledge that my income allowed us to travel, for B&J to have cars, etc. None of that would have been possible without my work. I'm still looking for my "passion" with absolutely no result. Perhaps you must look to your boys and know that you are enabling them to become fine, well-rounded men. Maybe it is not everyone's lot in life to find something that they would be willing to sacrifice all else for and maybe that is a goof thing.
ReplyDeleteThis is a tough one, Jim. For so many people that are our age and older, they have almost inherently defined themselves by their jobs - what they do. For us rude Americans, that is usually one of the first questions we ask when we meet someone - "What do you do for a living?" and we continue to perpetuate this way of thinking by asking our kids, "What do you want to do when you grow up?" (Evan wants to be fish swimmer). However, for some, especially this new generation, they are refuse to define themselves in terms of what they do. I can't say that I blame them because once what you do is gone, who are you? So, the question, I've heard that is now being proposed is "Who do you want to be?" and then start building your life around that. I also think passion has got to involve serving others. I think that's at least part of the reason we are here, loving God and loving others. There are lots of opinions and techniques out there, but I really think that a person can have different passions during his/her lifetime and that one's passion does not have to be wrapped up in a single job or career.
ReplyDeleteJim,
ReplyDeleteKind of random here, but maybe it will become clear to you after some reflection on what your current priorities are.
I found this talk on "reverse engineering" one's life to be helpful. Maybe you will, too:
http://www.marshillchurch.org/media/mens-advance-2006/reverse-engineering-your-life
Thanks all for the help
ReplyDelete