Living Life Passionately

Passion is the emotion of feeling very strongly about a subject or person. Its etymology: is Middle English – from Anglo-French and from Late Latin: passion – “suffering, being acted upon.” In his very interesting article, “What is Passion?” Brian Norris says, “When people ask me how I am, my usual response is ‘Positively Passionate.’ Most people let the unexpected words sink in. And then, they smile and their eyes sparkle. A few people get that deer in the headlight look on their face because a response other than ‘Fine’ or ‘I'm here’ is so foreign to them. They walk away assuming I'm a cult leader or something. Others get stern and ask ‘Passionate about what?’ Fair question. My response, ‘About life, and this opportunity to connect with you. I'm just glad to be alive and for having the ability to enjoy the world around us.’"

In my last pop-psych book, Living Life, Anyway, in Chapter 11 I talk about “Living Life, Passionately." The following is the first paragraph of that chapter (p. 81):

“Having strong, vigorous and robust feelings, emotions, and desires central to your life,” is one of the ways by which living life, passionately could be described. Occasionally, I metaphorically think of life as a sailboat, and, as most people know, among all of the variables pertinent to sailing a sailboat there are two which are critical: the boat’s sails and the boat’s rudder. Without sails, a sailboat doesn’t go anywhere, and without a rudder a sailboat has no purposeful direction. In life, without passion, our lives may not go anywhere, and without values, reason, and responsibility, our lives would have no purposeful direction. As implied in my dedication of this book, the “good life” has good sails and a good rudder. Chapter Twelve of this book focuses on responsibility and this chapter focuses on passion, and in case you may be wondering why I chose to address passion first, my rationale is rather simplistic: purpose and direction are not really that important if there is no energy, activity, or movement. There is a multitude of passions, too many to discuss herein. Nonetheless, I would like to briefly address six passions, with specific musings regarding why the respective passions are central to living a good and happy life.

Question: Do you live your life passionately (i.e., with passion)?

Bill