You Don’t Pick Your Passions…They Pick You

Posted on : October 16, 2009

Does that sound crazy or does it make sense? Not to get too philosophical…but I know that everyone has a purpose to fulfill on this earth. Whether it is to create beautiful music or artwork for others to enjoy, raise awesome children, or develop an invention that changes the world. Everyone’s purpose is important regardless of the scale, as we measure it. The blend of personalities and purposes brings diversity and beauty to our lives. Thus, we cannot make the judgement that what is right for us should be right for others.

This makes me think of Robinson Kreutznaer (Crusoe) who although received sound counsel from his father to be content with the “safe” middle class life he had been handed, he could not resist the inclination that led him so strongly against his father’s command and against all the entreaties and persuasions of his mother and friends. That inclination, back in the 1650’s as the story goes, was to head out to the seas.

Robinson Crusoe’s father’s advise to him was sound and sensible; however, did this change the fact that he had to follow the path he was destined to take?

So what is your passion? Have you felt the desire within you to do something you are destined to do?

I say, go for it!

Erik

P.S.

Although its a little long, its worth repeating his father’s discourse to him:

“He told me it was men of desperate fortunes on one hand, or of aspiring, superior fortunes on the other, who went abroad upon adventures, to rise by enterprise and make themselves famous in undertakings of a nature out of the common road; that these things were all either too far above me or too far below me that mine was the middle state, or what might be called the upper station of low life, which he had found, by long experience, was the best state in the world, the most suited to human happiness not exposed to the miseries and hardships, the labour and suffering of the mechanic part of mankind, and not embarrassed with the pride, luxury, ambition and envy of the upper part of mankind. He told me I might judge of the happiness of this state by this one thing – viz. that this was the state of life which all other people envied; that kings have frequently lamented the miserable consequence of being born to great things, and wished they had been placed int he middle of the two extremes, between the mean and the great; that the wise man gave his testimony to this, as the standard of felicity, when he prayed to have neither poverty nor riches.

He bade me observe it, and I should always find that the calamities of life were shared among the upper and lower part of mankind, but that the middle station had the fewest disasters, and was not exposed to so many vicissitudes as the higher or lower part of mankind; nay, they were not subjected to so many distempers and uneasinesses, either of body or mind, as those were who, by vicious living, luxury, and extravagances on the one hand, or by hard labour, want of necessaries, and mean or or insufficient diet on the other hand, bring distemper upon themselves by the natural consequences of their way of living; that the middle station of life was calculated for all kind of virtue and all kind of enjoyments; that peace and plenty were the handmaids of a middle fortune that temperance, moderation, quietness, health, society, all agreeable diversions and all desirable pleasures were the blessings attending the middle station of life; that this way men went silently and smoothly through the world, and comfortably out of it, not embarrassed with the labors of the hands or of the head, not sold to a life of slavery for daily bread, nor harassed with perplexed circumstances, which rob the soul of peace and the body of rest, nor enraged with the passion of envy, or the secret burning lust of ambition for great things; but, in easy circumstances, sliding gently through the world, and sensibly tasting the sweets of living, without the bitter; feeling that they are happy, and learning by every day’s experience to know it more sensibly.”