passion

Sometimes I worry about myself. I feel what I would call dispassionate in life. I go around admiring those who have passions or are passionate, borderline fanatical, about something. For some it is dance, for others cars, and still others soccer. This one thing or several things they would drop everything for, they go out of their way to be around this one thing. For the soccer fan, he would play every day and dress in soccer garb all day every day and watch soccer and kick random things on the ground, and relate even his academic inquiries with soccer. He love(d) soccer. I want this passion. Instead I have realized that I trade activities, that I don't keep up or continue anything. It is nice to be proficient in many things but it says something about a person when they are passionate about certain things. It's hard to decide who a person really is, if they divide their interests and aren't completely into anything they do. In any given moment they might feel joy and involvement in what they are doing, but it is not really passion.

I have played the violin, the piano, juggled, volunteered at a science museum, belly-danced, crocheting, coin collecting, rock collecting, danced the salsa, etc. It was only when I was looking at components of the Fulbright (a scholarship I'm going to be gunning for) where it asked for extra-curricular activities outside of classes, that I realized I had been dispassionate. Don't get me wrong, there are things I really like doing but I wouldn't drop everything to do them or work hard over long periods of time to do them, maybe once or twice. One such activity comes to mind: dodgeball. I love dodgeball but I wouldn't tell work to never schedule me Fridays so that I could go every week, only when convenience allows me the day off do I do it. I don't drop everything, it is not my passion.

I want to be passionate, I don't want to keep trading up activities. Maybe I just haven't found my passion but I'm more worried that I'm afraid to be passionate, to hold onto something so hard that I find myself depressed if I can't or don't have it. If I get to fanatical about dodgeball what happens after New College?  Dodgeball is not my lifestyle.

I have this same fear for pets and places. I am not connected intimately with any place. I could make myself a home anywhere. I like my cat and I love my cat but any affectionate cat could replace Teddy if something were to happen to him. If I did cry at his loss, it wouldn't be for him specifically but for the absence of his presence/affection.

What I'm most afraid of is that I hold this same attitude for people. It has never been tested fully and I hope it never will be. When Nikki went into the army I was without a best friend and found myself alone a lot without someone to talk to, only one way letters that might get answered in two weeks but not a hug in that moment when I felt alone and in need of someone. I learned to cope. Perhaps this is the issue, that I've had to cope without things so much so that I'm independent of people, places, and pets. I don't need them emotionally, I have myself. But, I'm just not sure. I feel like half a person sometimes, without that human element, without my passion.