http://www.dailyliked.net/backwards-brain-bicycle/.
I watched this video and was inspired to write this post:
I love the passion this guy has. It reminded me of a David Brooks article I read recently http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/12/opinion/sunday/david-brooks-the-moral-bucket-list.html?_r=0
I wanted to write this for my Brother-in-Laws. This idea, which admittedly is something very obvious, is that there are people who are completely dis-engaged from life, and there are others who are completely impassioned by it. For some people, this passion for life comes from some idea (e.g. Religion). We could call this secondary passion. For others, this passion is for life itself. It comes from genuine love of helping others, or from genuine love shared with a spouse, genuine love of teaching young pupils, or of finding new knowledge, or of using your creativity to help others, or maybe from watching the sunset, or from the moon float across the sky. It could come from a lot of things, but what I didn't realize when I was younger, was that this passion can be nurtured. All I know yet, is that people who have this passion seem to lead better lives. They help others more, they do more at work, even food tastes better. Importantly, their passion is contagious, it inspires those around them too. So how does one obtain this passion? Why don't we all have it? How does it relate to our conscious experience and Truth?
I would wager that those people who are completely impassioned or completely dispassionate were not born that way (barring medical disorders). Rather, they have nurtured that passion or neglected it. I think this nuturing must be the most powerful force of all. After all, even people who face extreme hardship, with the right atttitude, can still maintain their heart. But undoubtedly life circumstances play a role, too. Exactly how though I am not sure. Some of the most dispassionate people I know have see the most favorable circumstances (wealth, grades, etc.) And some of the most passionate, have come from the toughtest circumstances.
What about nature? Maybe kids are just born with a certain capacity for passion for life. I think this is face-value wrong, but maybe this is from my own experience (e.g. I feel that I have changed in my capacity (n=1)). I also feel I have seen others change, usually this is to be less passionate, but sometimes also for more. Or some people lead more complex patterns, they start passionate, go dry for a while, then gain their passion back later (parabolic, perhaps?).
As such, I will very unscientifically conclude that passion can be nurtured. In fact, it must be nurtured, or life will dry you out like a raisin in the sun. You might have some innate capacity, but this doesn't last you much beyond adolescence. After this, the passion you bring to you life is up to you. You make it, or you can destroy it. You could destroy it really fast if you do bad shit (personal experience speaking). You can build it up with good choices. Interestingly, you can also build it with Mindfulness and meditations, or with biking or yoga. Like I said at the outset, all this is obvious, but I don't think we think about this all the time. We go on thinking about our preoccupations and not focusing on what matters.
But what I wanted to talk about most of all, was how who you choose to hang out with effects your passion. Completely dispassionate people will dry you up in ways you don't even realize. They will dry you up not with what they say but with the contagion of their attitude. It shows in the implicit assumptions they make, the foundations of their thought, which you necessarily invoke when listening. The odd thing about thoughts, and about the human capacity for empathy, is that is makes thoughts contagious. Less so than the flu, but certainly more than most people think about. And so I write to them to warn them. Be on the look out for dispassionate people. You have been spoiled at home, surrounded by passionate people, but the world is not always like this. Some places are rich with passion and others are like passion-deserts. You should always be careful in passion deserts, you will get thirsty and maybe make mistakes.
But work is work, and I think it is what we do in our free time that matters most. It is when we recharge our soul and our love for life (for most of us). This is what made me write this. Find what you love, and find people who share that love, and a love of good things. But most of all, find friends who will help you. Find ones who will remind you that the light exists when you fall in the dark shadows that adversity may cast in your life. But most of all, the impetus of me to write this was to warn you about those who don't emit light at all, but who instead want to pull you down into darkness. We were with a dark person the other night. I won't go much further than to say that she really seemed not to care much about anything. She seemed miserable, awful really. I felt bad for her, but the worst part was, she wasn't honest about it. She acted like she wasn't sad, and that it was cool. But if you listened to her, you could watch her lips quiver with sadness a bit as she spoke. These are the most dangerous kinds of sad people. They don't tell you, they don't ask for help. And in reality, you can't help them.
I wish I knew how to teach you to recognize these, but I don't know what else to do other than to tell you to be careful.
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