Passion is a good word, no? How about authentic?
Well YES, but lordy me but if they aren't overlaid and plastered with ergghhy blerky ASSOCIATIONS............ Eeeewwww asssooociaaaatioooonss...
Jonathan Fields is done with passion. At least with the WORD anyway. He suggests "driving interest" as a replacement but then decides that YES THAT TOTALLY SUCKS in the comments. (Kind of. I'm sure he'll get there eventually!)
As for me, here are Some Rambling Thoughts On The Subject. Enjoy! *snickers into sleeve at the blerky word intentionally used to annoy hehehehe!*
Passion has become a buzzword so I think that for many people it is loaded with painful associations.
Memories of people, products, projects, processes, ideas, blog posts that *at the time* evoked passionate (ie. deeply felt) response of “YES! Yes, that SPEAKS to me! That is TRUE! I recognize that!”
But then… the product/process/idea didn’t deliver what I thought it would, I didn’t use it properly, I got distracted, I FAILED, I have BETRAYED my own passion, I am such a loser… (And every other variation of that loop… What a creep! I paid good money for this and it didn’t even work…) Yada yada yada…
Passion – we long for it. We fear it. We embrace it. We forget about it by accident. We curse it and we wouldn’t live without it. Til we forget to live by it, again. Passion is hardly an EASY thing to feel, possess and be possessed by. Numbness has its attractions! Until you can’t bear that anymore either.
Lots of people have taken advantage of the power of the word ‘passion’ to create impact without honoring the sanctity of the feeling and the struggle of the lived experience.
In doing so they have cheapened and commodified something that should be treated with reverence because of its potential to generate deep and soul-searing joy, courage and grief, and to drive powerful, deep, life-changing action which will throw us headlong into all of those experiences. (Aaaarrgghh! But in a good way!)
For those of us that love the word passion, and all that it evokes in its true meaning, it is painful to see it so easily and lightly tossed around.
But then, that’s OUR shit to deal with.
I think after all this thinking it through in public I will become a DEFENDER of the word passion. I will use it! In public! With HONOR! I will call people out when they misuse it and ask them what they really mean. I will make sure that MY meaning is as clear and evident as I can make it.
Oh god what am I letting myself in for? (Must be a passion!!)
xxx
