Strongly Worded

Got Passion?

My co-worker, Bob, just got back from a weekend with his friends. Their whole crew meets up every summer at the Saratoga Springs racetrack. They're all 50ish couples, including some divorcees and some "other men"/"other women" (people having affairs). Among them are Bob (realtor/construction expert), his wife (higher education maven), a computer guy, a police officer, a manager of a cement factory ... and others pursuing a whole range of professions.

One night, someone posed the question to their group: what is your life's passion? Bob reported that only two people responded. One was his wife, an extraordinarily successful woman, whose passion is golf. Her dreams of playing professionally were dashed when she injured her shoulder in college. Years ago, she tried to launch her own golf course/club, but it never took off. She loves her work in academia, but identifies golf as her true passion. The other passionate person was the cop. He'd always dreamed of working in law enforcement, and he loves it.

I found it very sad that only two of the ten people could identify a passion, and that only one of them focused on it professionally.

Recently, a bunch of my girlfriends contemplated a related question: What do you feel passion about, just in general? What would you do if you could do just anything? I was so surprised by the answers. K. would become a Forest Ranger. Melinda would revive VH1's "Pop Up Video" and be its archivist. I would become a food/travel writer, or else I would contribute to the inner workings of a housewares manufacturer.

While I was mulling all this over, I kept thinking of my Former Boyfriend, who has probably the most singular professional and personal purpose of anyone I know. He has devoted pretty much all of his adult life to healing people and treating cancer. He has sacrificed enormously to do what he's doing. And yet, when I recently shared all these musings with him, he got really quiet.

"I don't know if it's my passion," he said. "I think about that all the time."

This was stunning. We were together for almost five months and this comes out now?

I asked: "So what would you do if you could do anything?"

And get this: he said he'd be the General Manager of a football team.

I got to thinking about the difference passion about a thing (like golf, or football, or VH1) or a cause (like health care), and being passionate about the actual work associated with it. For example, our deplorable health care system appalls me to no end. But spending my professional life untangling the mess of managed care, HMOs, and insurance? No way. Loving football on TV (OK, and the radio, and the Internet) is one thing. But managing a team? Running a golf course, day to day? Pop-Up, 9 to 5?

According to Martin Luther King, "if you don't have a cause you're willing to die for, then you have no reason to live." While I think this is a little extreme, there is some truth to it. And as wise friends have pointed out, the trick is to find some combination of what you're passionate about and what you're passionate about doing.

For the lucky police officer, it's one and the same. For the rest of us, it's a holy grail of sorts.

Posted by Dori at 9:00 PM