There are so many messages out there about finding your passion. Your passion is your purpose. Your passion is what you’re meant to do. You have a passion inside you, you just need to let it come out. I’m exhausted just thinking about it. These messages are confirming and affirming for those who already have a passion and are actively pursuing them both personally and professionally. They are tacit permission and encouragement for those who have been pursuing them personally and want to add the professional side. Meaning they want to make their living at doing what makes them happy or obsessively takes up all their time. It brings hope to those who don’t know how to get started in life because these messages point an arrow at a place to start. You might not know how to get there, but if you can find your passion you’re on the right track.
Unfortunately these seemingly encouraging and benign statements that are truth for some are torment for others, because underneath these glowing empowerments are the negatives. If passion is the road to success and fulfillment than not having one must mean that you’ll never be fulfilled. If the only way to be on your path is to find your passion, but you never find one or never commit to just one of the many passions you discover, then do you never walk your spiritual path? Are you doomed to not have spiritual growth? Are you a failure as a person if you are being financially, emotionally, mentally, and spiritually supported and fulfilled by your passion?
It isn’t so. Elizabeth Gilbert speaks eloquently of this in her talk Flight of the Hummingbirds. There is another way to live that is just as fulfilling and spiritual and that is to follow your curiosity. Instead of depending on one thing for your happiness, following your curiosity wherever it leads you allows almost anything and everything you touch to be part of your path and to add to your happiness. Instead of the path being narrow and leading to one and only one destination, the path can be broad, have many destinations and meander through every kingdom and possibility. Like the wandering minstrels and bards of old, the best stories, the richest wisdom comes from those who adventure, not with a goal to achieve at all costs, but with wonder and a thirst to know. Those who follow their curiosity have a path that spans the entire world and everything in it. Luckily they like to share what they find and all the rest of us our better for it.
This – curiosity – has been hallmark of my life. It gives depth, motivation & sense of accomplishment negates ‘sheep – nose to butt’ – mentality to follow one’s own DNA self-confident direction in present life span. My difficulty is that having practiced this life force, at failing health, low SS/disability income, my profile of curiosity is diminished, het it is a valued vibrational energy I cherish!