I love the internet and I love that people share the information they find appealing. I was reading Fatcyclist.com today and it was an extremely funny tongue in cheek article. Its a double whammy cos the comments are as funny as the blog post. One of his readers shared some information on PASSION which I found insightful.
I lifted a paragraph from the relevant blog (Psychology Today - check it out) to share with you along with some random thoughts.
In sum, passions make life worth living but need to be pursued in ways that sustain themselves. That passions can entail sacrifice actually define them as passions. They are healthy when the sacrifice is as freely undertaken as the activity itself and does not undercut the goal of the passionate activity. That passions may strike others as irrational is irrelevant in describing them as harmonious or obsessive, healthy or unhealthy. After all, passions are personal and what matters about our passions is whether they make sense to us. http://tinyurl.com/yglr2v4
On a personal level, my passion has always been around leisure activities as it is for most people. We choose to do something that validates, us, challenges us and has positive outcomes. As far back as I remember, physical exercise and reading have been my passions. The nature of my sport may have changed but it is a thread that remains unbroken. It has ranged from extremely competitive and dedicated to totally recreational. It has experimented with fringe sports to mainstream.
Somewhere along the line, it may even have been obsessive passion. I look around at friends and fellow travellers and the most interesting people are the ones who are excited about something. They have a level of commitment to a project or a goal or a process and that makes them alive.
Of all that I have experienced, canoeing was the most demanding and rewarding. Cycling runs second by a long way which is perhaps the reason for it not constantly challenging me in the same way. Although, The Freedom Challenge was a soul pursuit and invigorating beyond words. A huge goal which left everything else as an anti-climax.
Harmonius passion vs obsessive passion. Which one are you?
Please don't tell me that you are neither!
No comments:
Post a Comment