Still Trying to Find Your Passion?

The dark side of passion

The popular definition of passion does not include the darker side of passion such as, an all-consuming desire for revenge, or anger, hatred, or lust. Or, maybe even an obsessive desire directed toward someone, which incidentally was the common understanding of passion before positive psychologists decided to play around with the definition.

For our purposes, let us limit our talk to the positive side of passion. So now, passion includes something we do on the internet when we begin looking for that elusive niche.

However, some experts on the subject, try to debunk the existence of passion. They say people who try to look for their passion will end up getting frustrated because there is no such thing.

So what Is it that we are looking for?

This dissenting opinion claims that what we call passion is just a strong preoccupation with something that engages our full attention. Okay, we all have "preoccupations" that engage our attention, such as - gardening, cooking, woodworking, crocheting, photography - the list is virtually endless. Some would call these as hobbies. Some would even call such mundance activities as reading and watching TV as "preoccupations."

When these preoccupations take a considerable amount of our time, and we engaged regularly in them, would we not call them passions?

Semantics and the real dark side

Which leads me to thinking that all these disagreements are just semantics. We may not agree about how to call it, but we will all agree that we really enjoy "being engaged" by it. There's no need to beat the issue to a pulp. You can call it whatever you want. Just be conscious of the fact that there's a downside to it. You know - priorities?

I forgot to tell you that Robert Vallerand says there's an opposite side to the nice aspect of passion - which he actually calls harmonious passion. The other side is what he calls obssesive passion. You know like a basketball player who pushes himself to destruction in order to win.

So, the cat is out of the bag. But, all of us know our limits. We understand the reason why there's a line somewhere which we are not allowed to cross. But still . . . . . . .

"A warrior does not give up what he loves. He finds the love in what he does." Socrates