Remaining Passionate: Keeping The Fire Burning

I’ve talked before about following your passion to live a fulfilled life. I believe that remaining passionate is crucially important to fulfilling your purpose in life. No matter what that purpose is, if you lose your passion, then you will never fulfill that purpose.

Remaining Passionate

The day after Christmas, I went out with my brothers-in-law and the younger one’s fiancee. Looking for a game to play that night and coming up empty at WalMart, we ended up at a local gaming shop. As we got back to the car, I made a comment about there always being that one guy in a group that never seems to grow up and you see him in his thirties still working the type of job that he was as a teenager. I explained that I saw a guy that I knew from my college days that was working there.

The older of my brothers-in-law commented that even though it seems sad at first if you think about it, you have to have some respect for the guy. Here is a guy that in his mid-thirties still has a passion for something that he was passionate about in his teens and has managed to earn a living at it.

My brother-in-law’s words really hit me, and I realized that it was a bit of envy that had prompted my original comment. What did I have from my teen years that I was still passionate about? I’m not really into any of the games that I was into. I’ve not really read any comics in years. I don’t really have any hobbies anymore. The only thing that I do have is my writing.

Rekindling Passion

It is so hard to maintain the passions of our youth as we grow up. To pursue our adult needs and wants, we find ourselves giving up those dreams to fill those wants. Sometimes a spark inside of us dies as we have to manage grown-up responsibilities. Adult life requires so much of us, and if we don’t make a priority of following our passion, it will die. The only way to keep it alive is to carve out time for it.

Like anything in our lives, if we don’t feed our passions, they will die. But no matter how long it has been since we’ve fed our passions, if we start feeding them again they will grow back.

Teaser: Come back next time when we’ll discuss how one decision can change your entire life.