Passionless

I think the modern work world is overrated with high paying salaries to people who really don’t do much. But the economy and interest rates, and the increasing cost of living and rising tuition, expensive gas and environment friendly hybrid vehicles dictates what a job is valued at in order to keep money pumping into and out of the cities, states, countries, continents, and world. And somehow us human beings get lost in our materialistic need to keep up with our tainted environment, restricting our true desires from our must haves all because we need to survive - and surviving means renting, owning, eating, wearing, and worst of all- working! When I was a child and even into my teenage years, I spent many days dreaming and preparing for what I was to become as an adult. The world seemed to offer so many possibilities with so few restrictions. In the “old days” children were taught – be a good person (don’t get expelled, do drugs, or get arrested), get good grades, participate in sports or other extracurricular activities and well, all the rest will fall into place. For most of us, what we became or the job we might have, never had to do with how much we would make. Several years ago, where I was going and how I would impact the world was driven by the mere desire inside of me to do “something” that was influential. My passion so pure and virgin like, was not driven by a particular topic, cause, or dollar figure – it was simply the “compelling emotion” of wanting to become part of something bigger and greater than I had known at fifteen years old. So how did I get here? Sitting behind a desk in a nice windowed office, at a top consulting firm, making a decent salary (I take that back. I am underpaid. Why? Because everyone else is still making more doing less) somehow feeling less passionate and more confused about who I am and who I should become than when I was just a child.

Perhaps as we get older our passions become diluted by the driving forces of our environment that dictates what we should value, what we should become, what defines success. The “real” world my friends, is anything but real. We deceive children into believing that they can become anything they want – but then when they have received their education they also acquire high interest rates accompanied by never ending loans, we give them six months to find a job before they must pay up. The pressures from our external environment (rent, groceries, student loans) cause us to suppress our deep rooted passions in order to survive in this demanding, competitive society they we are forever indebted too.

An internal passion, a desire to have impact is like MasterCard, priceless. Never lose touch of your initial dreams, desires, and passions. Tap into your soul regularly in order to remain true to yourself and the path in which you anticipate sketching out over the course of your life. Sometimes we lose ourselves in all the things that everyone else values, we somehow convince ourselves that we value those same things and as a result our passions fade, and our dreams become blurred. Hold true to yourself – and when lost, continue to rediscover who you are as a person – you are bound to find yourself back at where you should have started.