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From slcpi!govt.shearson.com!mjohnsto@uunet.UU.NET Mon Jan 7 17:30:06 1991
To: wordy@Corp
Subject: chapter-55
TIDAL PASSION
by Steven K. Roberts
Soquel, CA
Mayday, 1990
I talk often in these pages of passion. It's a driving theme of nomadness, of
learning, of life in general -- it's the crystallization of dreams, the lust
for evolution, the very antithesis of comfort. Without passion, life is spent
waiting . . . waiting for someone else to make it all seem worthwhile.
With it, growth is a way of life.
Passion is not a notion, or a psychological abstraction. It often appears for
a while in association with sex, but that's not what it's all about either.
Passion is raw and all-consuming, and can't be replaced with religion, New Age
interpretations of experience, academic compartmentalizations of the universe,
a romp up the career ladder, or copping an attitude. It's intense, almost
violent; it renders everything else in life unimportant while driving you on a
quest of personally epic proportion.
Something like that is not to be taken lightly, especially if you once had it
and now sense it slipping away.
The problem is that this whole culture discourages passion -- though not
overtly, of course. We're politely encouraged to excel, to invent, to make
something of ourselves. But the people who really do so have had to struggle
past the boundaries of a society that offers up numbing entertainment, reduces
education to the level of homogenization, discourages risk in its corporate
world, applauds conformity, treats the exceptional as aberrations, and rewards
the RsuccessfulS with that spectacularly sanitized mediocrity known as suburban
bliss.
There's an abrupt boundary between the haves and the have nots, as far as
passion is concerned. You can't just dabble in passion -- it's all or nothing.
Suddenly finding it makes you resent Christians for appropriating that
otherwise delightful term Rborn againS; losing it makes you feel dead (and in
some tragic cases, even take steps to make it so).
No, there's no such thing as a passion dilettante. Your life is either driven
by a grand, magnificent, all-encompassing design . . . or it isn't.
What is possible, unfortunately, is to live passionately for a few years then
suffer through the agonizing process of watching it slip away --Jwithout even
knowing whether it's recoverable. It must be a bit like Parkinson's . . . the
mind goes, but slowly enough that you witness your own dissolution and
understand perfectly well what it means.
* * *
What I'm assuming, however, is that passion can be viewed as a tidal, and thus
cyclic, phenomenon. It has been in my life, certainly, with every ebb a slow
tragedy and every flow an exuberant celebration of new growth. The question
is, how can one short-circuit this process and keep passion alive? Could we
survive nonstop passion, day in and day out? Is endless passion even possible?
If you see it slipping, can you snatch it back?
One way, I think, is with landmarks. For me, it's a strange mix of favorite
road music, an amusing juxtaposition of design concepts, fantasies of
prototypical encounters Out There, and a few freeze- frame images of intense
romance or adventure etched like lightning flashes on my brain.
Another way to hang on to it is by spending time with passionate people --
other mad, driven souls who brave the chortlings of the complacent and fear not
the spectre of bankruptcy. It's powerfully reinforcing stuff, and when you
forget your own passion, a spark from someone else's can reignite the blaze.
Now let's enumerate methods that don't work:
>> Commiserating with dispassionate friends (did you know that The Random
House Dictionary defines dispassionate as Rfree from or unaffected by passion
or biasS as if passion were a disease and somehow comparable to bias?)
>> Making lists of things to do, especially if they represent the
intellectualization of something about which you were once passionate.
>> Perennially reshuffling your workspace, filing systems, business structure,
software choices, circle of friends, or choice of town -- all in the name of
correcting problems that are interfering with your pursuit of the Big Dream.
>> Waiting for someone else to come along and solve your problems, or, if
you're wealthy, attempting to subcontract your quest.
>> Praying, drinking, getting stoned, swilling coffee, playing Crystal Quest,
stroking crystals, or otherwise engaging in any numbing ritual that by direct
effect or superstition is somehow involved with soothing your psyche or warding
off danger. (Not that all these things are necessarily bad, mind you, they
just don't have anything to do with passion . . . even though some of them feel
pretty good. Why, one day on a coffee buzz I broke 1.8 million in Crystal
Quest and celebrated with a drink.)
Knowing what might work and what definitely doesn't is useful, but the most
important thing is recognizing when your passion is slipping -- and stopping it
before it's too late. The trappings and rewards of past brilliance echo
sweetly with the magic of days gone by, and it's blissful to sail on remembered
waves if you ignore the fact that you're not on a boat anymore.
Remember why you are. Life is only once, and slips by so smoothly that you can
get away with coasting through a whole career and still look pretty good. Find
what you really want. Grasp it with unshakable passion and focused desire.
Everything else is secondary.
-- Steve