About Passion

One of the most difficult questions for me to answer has to be - "What are you passionate about?". I start thinking about my life from the beginning, things I enjoyed doing, things I overdid at times, got bored and moved on. But there has not been a single thing I can do anytime and anyhow. Many people have some passion in life, and at times more than one. People are passionate about adventurous activities, music, painting, riding, photography, travelling and hundred other things.

But don't these passions restrict you? Say if you are passionate about one thing, then in your free time you will prefer to do only that thing. You may not even explore other things. Your concentration will be solely on the ride, or photography. You may not randomly take a halt at the place and for a change not click any pictures, but capture the feel in your mind. It may be a totally non-photographic location, but you may miss out on its beauty as you were looking for one all along. But well, photography makes you happy thus it may not be a loss to you.

Anyway this passion thing is beyond me. I fail to understand how someone can do the same thing again and again. And when I read about passion, I think others think that I am foolish not to have one. Like this quote by E. M. Forster that says. "One person with passion is better than forty people merely interested." And Hugh Hefner said, "I didn't want to repeat my parents' life. I saw in their lives a routine and a lack of dreaming, a lack of the possibilities, a lack of passion. And I didn't want to live without passion."

I somehow do not believe that you have no life if you do not have any passion. Lack of it gives you more opportunities to try out other things more frequently. Or so I think. I love travelling as much as I enjoy photography. But I forget to click when I see a breathtaking location. At times we decide to go for a drive to a far away destination, but end up spending time at a dhaaba and come back. We decide to go for treks and river rafting but we end up spending our time elsewhere. And these experiences are usually more memorable.

In a way if you see, I am passionate about randomness. Or maybe passion and random are oxymoron. Who cares so far as it keeps me going. And when you are blessed with like-minded people, these things become ten times more enjoyable. Lack of passion becomes a blessing. We make a plan and leave within hours. And that plan is not only about our passion. It can be something as silly as a house party or some drive on ghats during monsoon. There are days I spend working without any holiday, and there are hours I spend reading books. And some days I spend doing nothing. I have tried my hands at painting, music - singing as well as playing instruments, dancing, acting in plays, writing scripts and what not. And I am grateful that I never found a passion, or I may not have known so many things.

Whoever said that people who lack passion don't have a life. I bet these scholars would have been sober when they wrote these quotes.