Passion

On my way to work this morning, I listened to a podcast that I had downloaded some time ago but never got around to actually listening to. I’m rather good at that.
Currently, I have about eighty podcasts that I have on a series loop download and yet I never allow enough time to sit down, stick my headphones on and listen to these great and sometimes inspiring pieces of broadcasting.

There are plenty of people out there who constantly gripe about the BBC and its media services. Yet simultaneously, the BBC iPlayer service has been reported as having something 1.5 billion downloads for 2008 and that is before you get onto the brilliant podcasts that are available for regular radio enthusiasts who cannot get to listen to their favourite programmes at the time when they are initially broadcast, and I am not sure it includes all the listen again services on the BBC website either.
In fact, I am beginning to think that I am rather passionate about the BBC, and that statement in itself contains a small error.
Does passion need a pre-fixed descriptive word; an emphasising word? Can you be ‘somewhat’ or ‘very’ or ‘mildly’ passionate? Isn’t passion a stand alone word that conveys its entire meaning in its seven simple letters?

The podcast that I was listening to was a Soapbox by David Mitchell – he of “Peep Show” and “Mitchell and Webb” fame.
I have to admit that I had somewhat dismissed this man as “the posh one” who had nothing really to say to me as his life and upbringing clearly had no resonance with my own. However, in recent months I have been reading his choice and amusing articles in the Observer on a regular basis. He has an acute wit and is an extremely good observational writer, and his short three to five minute podcasts are in a similar vein.

This one was title “Passionate”.
He started by standing in front of a still of a group of professionals stating how small he felt in comparison with these carefully chosen, aesthetically pleasing and gloriously PC bunch with the token woman and Asian man amongst them. He said that these people were passionate! What were they passionate about? Tax – but not any tax! No, they were passionate about tax optimisation.

He went on to say that his local council were “passionate about providing customer focused services for residents” and he imagined a scenario whereby they were at first keen about services, then very excited about customer led services and are now in an orgasmic shriek about their “better customer focused services”.

He continued to say that an upholstery firm were “passionate about sofas….. and we hope you will be too”. But as David points out, he isn’t passionate about sofas and he is never likely to be passionate about sofas because he cannot eradicate that “damnable sense of perspective”. He is interested as to why these people are passionate about sofas and not about quality art or social injustice or fine wine and food.

He asks a simple question. If these people are passionate about these things, then what must it be like to have sex with them? Are they as passionate with their lovers or have they exhausted all their passion on their professional passion?
One quote came from an organisation that was “passionate about helping small businesses and that is an understatement”.
“An understatement?” retorts David, “what would be an accurate statement if passion is too meagre a word?”

He concludes with a statement from John Hopkins University Student’s Union where apparently the incumbents are “passionate about everything”.
“Blimey” he says, “they must be exhausted!”

And indeed they must.
Can you actually sustain a passion for everything or is it rather like the happiness issue whereby constant happiness can neither be sustained or realistic nor even measured and understood if you do not know and experience the opposite at least some of the time.
A natural high is an excellent state of being but stuck on a natural high for a constant period of time is hardly a way to really appreciate life in any form or reality. Passion is something that everyone should have in their lives but you cannot live 24/7 consumed by your passion, in your passion, ignoring every other mundanety of life.
It simply doesn’t work like that.
Constant passion like constant happiness negates is very existence and diminishes its grandeur.

But there is something else that can diminish passion, and I think this is clearly something that Mitchell was trying to convey.
If we overuse the word in contexts that do not justify the magnitude of the word, then aren’t we doing it a disservice?

Can you truly be passionate about sofas? Can that passion be comparable to the passion of seeing a newborn enter the world, or the passion of sexual arousal that is so overwhelming that words cannot truly be used to express its intensity?
Some might argue that this is perfectly plausible, for each person’s passion is their own individual passion, and to some extent to cannot argue with that.

For me though, it has made me think about how we should use the word ‘passion’, how I should use the word ‘passion’ for some of the wonderful things in my life are exciting and wonderful and incredible and enjoyable but are they all passions?

Off to the dictionary and it is clear that this word has so many meanings and interpretations that one could also argue there is no purpose in trying to break it down into one single definition, but the word itself is so full of strength and vibrancy that I fear we do overuse it in a similar way to its sister word of “love”.
The dictionary says that passion is, and I quote, a powerful emotion, boundless enthusiasm, a deep and overwhelming emotion, something that is desired intensely, an irrational or irresistible motive for a belief or action, ardent affection, etcetera.
But is passion an emotion or is it an overwhelming feeling that comes from a powerful emotion? Or has it become a word that cannot be clearly defined due to its overuse and miscomprehension?

What is passion or a passion? What is passionate or being passionate compared with loving or adoring or liking or getting excited or energised by…?”
What am I and others passionate about? Can passion and passions fluctuate in the way that other preferences alter over time? Can you be passionate in a negative form, passionately hating something or should ‘passion’ in this context be replaced with a word such as ‘avidly’?

I don’t write this in the hope that I or others are going to come up with a definitive answer. I am merely writing to convey and think about the word and its uses. But more and more, I return to the idea that passion is about a personal feeling; a strength of feeling that drives and sustains you, your beliefs and your actions. Passion is an intensity that is on a higher plane that a simple liking or an alternative abhorrence to some stimulus or another.
Passion is about you, about me, about an individual’s response.
And of course it is about much more. It links to your soul, your purpose. It feeds and is fed from adrenalin.
Passion is something that every person should have in their lives to give meaning to the things they do, the people they choose to do them with, the surroundings they either have to or choose to live within.
Life without passion, without thought and feeling, without fire and vibrancy would be dull, and for me, pretty meaningless.

So, I now have to consider what my passions are.
And at first glance, they seem extensive. Is this because I have done the same thing as David Mitchell suggests other people have done, by placing the word ‘passion’ against everything I feel strongly about or that I like more than ‘a lot’? Or is it because I am a fortunate person who can find passion in an abundance of things because I am open enough to feel?

I cannot write about all of my passions because as I have been thinking about this writing, more of the things that I deem to be my passions keep springing to life, and I am now consumed with the thought that some of my passions are mere likings.
So I am starting a list that is neither complete nor static. Writing this piece tomorrow, I may have come up with different passions, not because I am so fickle as to change my passions overnight, but because through different circumstances and different impetus one specific passion may be more prevalent on that day.
To be preoccupied with passion can be exhausting and I do not want to be debilitated by my passions. I want to positively embrace them and experience the passion in its truest form. A constant and perpetual arousal is simply not sustainable, nor should it be.

And so to start the list of passions……

I thought I was passionate once about football. I’m not. I love my football. I have affection and fondness and loyalty for my football team, but I am not passionate about it. The pleasure that I get from my ongoing support to a ludicrous team is not all consuming. It does not overtake or interrupt my life.
My brother is passionate about football. He really is. It’s not just a hobby or some interesting way of spending a few hours. It is indeed his passion. So maybe you can be passionate about sofas after all?

I’m passionate about learning. I am passionate about the fact that every person should be open to and have the opportunities for continued learning throughout their lives. They should be riddled with the bug to look around and read and consider and think and find out and form opinions and views and values. They should be taught to see and hear and taste new experiences and indentify the glorious learning that this world has to offer. They should be able to feel passion in the experiences they have, learning to connect spiritually to the incredible beauty and earnest simplicity of the natural world.

I am passionate about books and the internet as a source of learning and enjoyment in that learning.
One of my proudest moments as a parent was walking up the stairs one night to check that my child had gone to sleep, only to find a two year old lying fast asleep in bed with an open book covering his face and a further thirty or so scattered around his bed. My passion had clearly been passed on – a two year old, unable to read yet already experiencing and beginning his intrepid steps to what I hope is a lifelong passion for the written word.
I am passionate about how much more I want to read, both fiction and non fiction, making up for the sparser times in my life when reading has fluctuated and vied for time with competing priorities.

I am passionate about people, especially the important people in my own life. I am passionate about empathising, understanding and responding to their needs, their drive, their passions, as in understanding and appreciating the things that overwhelm and enamour then is mutually beneficial. I am passionate about love and care and thoughtfulness and I feel passionately that I have plenty to give as well as receive.
I am passionate about people that I don’t even know, to some extent, as my passion moves me to hope that those without love and warmth and understanding will be fortunate enough one day to really understand and experience the joy of being passionate about humankind. Please note that this passion of the unknown bod doesn’t extend to fascists and thoughtless idiots and those that should know better!

I’m passionate about music; most kinds of music come to think of it. Maybe I am not discerning enough but I adore listening to and playing music, intrigued and invigorated by an individual’s ability to compose and create and convey meaning through the songs they have written or the instruments that they play. It is an immense joy to feel the warmth and fulfilment that a single composition can have. I love disappearing into the depths of my soul as I am carried away by the simplest or the most complex heart wrenching or heart warming melodies, where other people’s passions are so apparent. Yes, other people’s passions really inspire and feed my own passions. I am passionate about other people having passions and how I use their passions in my own passions!

I’m passionate about intimacy. I am passionate about the ultimate bliss that sexual expression and emotional togetherness can bring. How wonderful it is that something as instinctual as making love can be a passion and also be passionate, sending two people into a state of Satori that is immeasurable in its complexity and indescribable in its simplicity.

And I am now passionate about writing, not always for the content of the writing itself but for the opportunities it affords me to sit for a few hours, reflecting and meditating, conveying and expressing, stimulating and encouraging the thoughts that have laid dormant throughout the mundane features of the daily chores.

Passion needs definition. Passion needs thought. Passion needs to be a part of people’s lives as much as food and warmth and clothing and love.
A world without passion is not a world that I want to be part of, and I truly hope that everyone can find something to be passionate about, even if it is sofas!