Note (11/24/09): I’m leaving this afternoon for a Thanksgiving road trip. I’ll be slow to moderate comments and answer e-mail for the next week. I’m up to Nov. 10 in my reader e-mail queue. If you sent me an e-mail after that date, you haven’t been forgotten, and I’ll get to you as soon as I can.
Problems with Passion
My friend Scott Young recently published a blog post with an intriguing title: “What if you have more than one passion?” He reports that several readers admitted that they have “a hard time focusing” because they have “too many passions.”
My readers report their own problems with passion. Here are some excerpts from recent e-mails:
- “I’m currently feeling great antipathy for physics…I’ve found myself questioning my passion for the subject. “
- “My only true passion is biology, but it’s a damn big field in which I have no focus other than my general spiritual love for green things.”
- “Yes, this particular major isn’t my passion. However, my studies are funded by my disciplinarian father…”
My point here is that “passion” seems to be a common source of problems. For some, they have too many passions and don’t know where to focus their energies. For others, it’s the lack of a passion, or maybe a belief that their particular passion won’t bring them somewhere worth going.
In this short post, I want to share a new way of looking at this troublesome concept…