Due to some changes in my life, I have been well, forced would be too strong a word to describe it, let’s just say that I was recently invited to take a long hard look into my life.  Something that you would know I abhor more than anything else, if you knew me well enough.

A few days ago came up the question of passion: what exactly am I passionate about in this life?  What am I absolutely bonkers for?  I really would like to say that I am passionate about my job, but that would be a lie.  I like that it enough; it’s easy, the people I work with are great and the pay’s good.  Obviously these are not the words that one would use to describe a dream job.  Incidentally, when I was a little girl who knew nothing of the hardship and expenses of life, my dream job was to become a doctor, more for the pride of being the first doctor in our family than anything else.

I’d also like to say that I am head-over-heels passionate about writing, but I don’t think I am anymore.  I really believe that I used to be passionate about it, but that was a long time ago and any dregs of that burning enthusiasm for the craft has long been wiped away from my person by my course, Nursing.  It’s a sad event even made sadder by the fact that I felt it happening during my junior year in college and yet I didn’t really do anything to stop it.

So comes the natural question if I am passionate about nursing and sadly, I never really took to the profession.  Then why did I take it in the first place, you ask?  Because at the time I was naïve enough to think that I’d somehow learn to love it and if time came that I find that I couldn’t stomach the job, I can always use it as a pre-med course to become a clinician.  If I had now the chance to meet my seventeen year-old self I would slap myself silly for being so cocky; who did my young self think she was to put Med. school as a back up plan?

At this point I am passion-less and totally indifferent to the world.   There are a lot of things in this life that I like, but I don’t think there are many that I love enough to make sacrifices for, and isn’t that the main point of passion?  That one has this uncontrollable enthusiasm for something, for anything that one would be willing to give up small comforts like money or pride.

Maybe I’m just looking at this thing all-wrong.  Somehow I have it in my head this romantic notion that if you want to do something that you love, you have to give something up, because the world is unfairly fair like that.  It’s that cliché picture of a starving artist living the solitary life away from the world for his craft that pops up, and even though he looks miserable from every angle, I figured that he’s happy because he’s doing what he loves.  But maybe that doesn’t need to be the case in real life?  Maybe there’s this magical work around in the real world and if you find it, one would be able to have one’s cake and not feel guilty at all for eating it too.

Or maybe I’m just making up excuses for what, basically, is just cowardice-cowardice at being rejected, being told that no, you’re not really good enough when you thought that you were specifically hand-picked by God himself to do this particular task.

I don’t know.  Thoughts?