passion..........
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passion..........
I... looked ahead and behind at the empty road and up at the empty sky; the sheer bigness of the world made me feel lonely to the bone.
The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people, too many directions to go.
I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility."
Susan Orlean - in her book The Orchid Thief
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 It seems
to me that the greatest challenge, at once the easiest and the hardest
thing for human beings to do, is to follow our passion.
You might have many of those... but I want to speak about the passion that is the path of your working life. As new graduates, you stand very clearly at a crossroads of choice. In truth, we are all continuously engaged in a moment by moment process of evolving choice about how and to what we will commit our emotions, thoughts and actions, our very being. I had the good fortune to choose to immerse myself in becoming an actress. I chose to act because I felt it would challenge me on every level and indeed it has. ... |
I can't stand here and tell you to pursue your dream, because I think that each of us arrives at that, or not, in our own way. But what I can say is that in following mine, I have found the world to be a most magical place. It is not for the fainthearted -- it's an arduous path, it needs commitment and discipline. ... To not live by rote is an extraordinary privilege in a world where there is so much suffering, war, waste of human life. To not live by rote is a choice you have. At this moment it may feel like an act of faith, like stepping into the void -- but remember there is great exhilaration and wonder in reaching beyond your comfort zone. Alice Krige - from
her Rhodes University |
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Whatever it is, I have to really love it -- that's what's important to me. I wouldn't have done "The Lion King" if I didn't believe it has something solid to say to people.
When you approach it that way, you come at it with all your soul and intelligence.
Julie Taymor [quotes and photo from O, the Oprah Mag., Nov. 2001]
also see interview: Julie Taymor
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My New Zealand heritage has made me afraid to show passion to that degree. It's a very much 'don't-get-so-excited'-kind of a culture. And I'm envious of those people, and respectful of those people whose passion is expressed in their work. [Nicole Kidman in 'The Portrait of a Lady'] gets a bee in her bonnet, and she's off. She's excited. And the passion and the feeling is stronger than any sense of censorship, and I like that.
Jane Campion [Associated Press, January 17, 1997]
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|
"I want people to appreciate how life-saving exuberance is to us as a species," says Jamison. "I have always been fascinated by mania. There is an exhilaration in the early stages of mania that people who have experienced it would sell their firstborn to feel again. Mania is a sickness; it's easy to romanticize unless you've been there. "What is really healthy and great is exuberance. A passion for life, an exuberant temperament, allows people to do things they wouldn't be able to do if they didn't have it," Jamison said... /// "Like many essential human traits, exuberance is teeming in some and not to be caught sight of in others," Jamison writes. Men are more likely to be exuberant than women, for example. Happily, exuberance is contagious. And women are more likely to "catch" exuberance than men. Theodore Roosevelt.shared his father's great exuberance and passed it on to people he encountered throughout his life, Jamison writes. A reporter for the New York Times wrote of Roosevelt when he was president, "You don't smile with Mr. Roosevelt; you shout with laughter with him." |
 Jamison
theorizes that we owe our magnificent system of national parks to the
infectious enthusiasm Roosevelt had for nature and for the right of the
American people to enjoy it. ///Jamison even talks about nonhuman characters that embody exuberance -- Snoopy, the dog from the comic strip Peanuts, Winnie the Pooh's friend Tigger, and Toad from The Wind in the Willows. They all can be very irritating, she notes, but they also are very engaging. /// Exuberance even "keeps occasional company with grief," she writes. In fact, it's often what pulls us through our darkest hours. > from article : Bit of whee! is healthy -- who knew? - by Delia O'Hara, Chicago Sun Times, October 19, 2004 > Johns Hopkins Professor Kay Redfield Jamison is
author of the books An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness; Night
Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide, |
> see related pages : depression.....depression : books.....hypomania
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One of the most powerful tools in your "success tool box" is having real passion for your goal. Why passion?
Because intense passionate desire for your goal will help you burn in those new neural pathways even faster. Many, many scientific studies have shown that intense emotion (passion) is a key success tool.
PLUS (and this is really a *big* plus), intense passion will also help you rapidly override any inappropriate old "failure messages" stored in your subconscious mind.
>from article : 5 Steps to Goal Setting Success
By Dr Jill Ammon-Wexler of Quantum-Self~ ~ ~ ~
I think adults don't enjoy life as much as children do, and they take life for granted. I don't think adults really know what true passion is." Alexandra Nechita (painter; born in Romania in 1985)
[from ABC Special "Teens: What Makes Them Tick?", March 8.99]
book: Outside the Lines by Alexandra Nechita
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3. Get Passionate
Entrepreneurs who love what they do are more apt to be successful.
Discover your passion by paying attention to situations or things that grabs and keeps your attention. Focus less on your skills (what you CAN do) or your resume (what you HAVE done) and instead, try to tune into what it is you really LOVE and WANT to do.
What types of things did you love to do as a child? What kinds of characteristics or talents do others compliment you on? What kind of jobs/careers do you envy?
> from article 10 Steps to Escape the Job World and Create the Life You Really Want - by Valerie Young
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| Through an interlocking series of texts and images,
Representing the Passions explores how extreme sensations such as
wonder, misery, ecstasy, and rage have been portrayed at different
moments in Western culture.
Moving across multiple fields of creative endeavor and intellectual inquiry - from classical artifacts to Chicano art, political protest to operatic performance, René Descartes's writings on the soul to the Internet's digitized flesh - this book reveals how the passions have elicited, eluded, and transformed the act of representation. In addition to contributions by visual artists Anne and Patrick Poirier and video artist Bill Viola... published to coincide with Bill Viola: The Passions, an exhibition on view at the Getty Museum from January 24 to April 27, 2003. [text from exhibition site]
............Bill Viola: The Passions |
 |
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The crux of the film ["Garden State"] has to do with the sense of numbness that so many people experience in contemporary life. The film demonstrates how important it is to fight that numbness and let oursekves feel our emotions, including joy, even with everything else that goes on. Joy - whether it's the joy I picked up on a recent summer night [a newstand owner in New York saying, "Nice night, huh?"], or the joy in "Garden State" [dvd] or the omnipresent joy in new music that Elton John speaks of in his column (page 46) - is a great weapon in these times.
It captures the beauty of life, and by extension, maybe it can help keep life beautiful. For everyone.
Ingrid Sischy - in her Letter From the Editor, Interview, July 2004
..*related pages:......ecopsychology......emotion......positive psychology~ ~ ~ ~
Otis B. Driftwood [Groucho Marx] : And now, on with the opera. Let joy be unconfined. Let there be dancing in the streets, drinking in the saloons, and necking in the parlor. A Night at the Opera [DVD]
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Don't ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and do that. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive. // Follow the grain in your own wood.Howard Thurman [1900-1981]
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