Life, Passion, Happiness

Not much happened out of the usual this morning. I woke up and readied myself for school. It was, of course, cloudy with promise of rain today, but that's just Nashville for ya. I drug myself to my car, slid the key into the ignition, and then slipped away into mental lockdown. When you don't feel passion about what it is that you do everyday, you inevitably become a machine. Your mind flips off and the only processing you are familiar with is the task at hand. Ah, but I hate that. I've always had a deep inner desire for something phenominal to happen in my day-to-day, but nothing ever seems to come along. Maybe that's how most people feel, I can't really say.

But sometimes, just sometimes, I do wake up in the middle of the day. I remember waking up today. I was walking out of art class and we had just watched a clip from "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". I find that movie to be particularly inspiring so that may have had something to do with it. But when I walked outside, the sun was breaking through the clouds. I haven't seen the sun for days now and I was really beginning to miss it. It really seemed appropriate, too, having the sun break through the grey like that. That is, after all, how I feel right now in the midst of finals and, well... life in general. But at that very moment I felt happy about life. I couldn't help but smile and soak it all in. The air felt nice, the sun felt warm, and I really felt genuinly care-free. And for the rest of the day I was met with quite a bit of adversity, but nothing seemed to wipe the smile off of my face. It was a good feeling.

I don't have that very much. I wish I did, but I tend to meet everyone's (and by 'everyone's' I mean business relationships) expectations when I perform like a machine rather than myself. I also generally have several things on my mind, things that I'm trying to sort through and/or figure out. It weighs you down after a while until you just feel serious and dry all of the time.

I was thinking today about the people in my life that are passionate and intrigued by... pretty much everything. I like being around those kinds of people. They help me forget about of the insignificant crap that I spend so much time worrying about. I think what my problem is, though, is that I haven't really found my passion yet. I'm doing doing doing all of the time so I can meet expectations, but I've never explored my own interests. I tend to take the road that seems the best readily available rather than looking for THE best one out there. It might be something that society doesn't deem as particularly glamorous, but more and more I'm learning to not really care about society's classification of spectacular.

Above all else though, I'm praying for change in my heart and mind rather than in my life. I know enough about happiness to understand that it isn't about circumstance, but about the heart. Some of the most circumstantially disenfranchised people in the world also maintain happiness. I ask myself why and what I keep coming back to is that they understand the placement of the way things are. They see God as God and themselves as themselves. Whether or not they understand their purpose is moot. They follow their passion, that little spark in their lives that says "Yes, this is what you were created to do."

So, the biggest lesson I have yet to learn is... where is my passion? I know all about audio engineering, singing, leadership, travel, school work, and service jobs, but where is my passion? Maybe it's possible that I have already met it and it's just not that flattering to me. I suspect that I should be rational about it and accept that as a possibility. Ah, but I have the blessing/curse of being a hopeless romantic. Just as I believe that when I see my wife for the first time, I'll know it, so too do I believe that when I find my passion, I will know it. Maybe I'm damned for such a mentality. I mean romantics didn't catch the header of "hopeless" for no reason. But that is my belief, and as my philosophy professor taught, you cannot disprove someone's beliefs. Peace and love.