Looking for the reasons my chest has been feeling so tight, why I become so restless and feel I must get out---move---anywhere sometimes, I reflected on a recent conversation that centered around the topic of "How to live one's life" in the everyday, and this person said that it's important to find one's passion.
Of course, this idea isn't new to me, but it reminded me of how long I've been seeking what others seem to know in their hearts early on. Some people discover in childhood or as teenagers what they wish to pursue, to focus on in their lives and they become accomplished at that art or craft or profession and stay with it.
Instead, I seem intent on tasting a little of everything I'm interested in, of experiencing as much as possible, knowing that this may make my experiences more shallow than those who delve more deeply over time into a certain passion, but also feeling that it's just my way----something I don't really desire to change because it feels natural to me, even though it may not seem ideal.
If I had to point to a single "passion" I've pursued with any regularity I'd say it's been writing, but its pursuit has been as fragmentary and on-again, off-again as any other aspect of my life, and thus the results are equally fragmented and poorly honed, forming not a body of work but scattered papers (and credentials now gathering dust). And so I wonder whether my passion is simply misnamed, or whether I lack the fire of discipline. I'm not sure writing is one of those saving passions, though (at least for me)---that is, the kind of passion that knits together days and makes a life feel whole and purposeful. But maybe it will be, especially if it's connected to nature, one of my other passions. . . .
