Passion

I tie myself in knots because I think I should be passionate about something productive. It's an attitude handed down by my engineer father and probably one I have handed down to my kids.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language gives "boundless enthusiasm" as one of the definitions of Passion.

I was thinking, as I was driving, that maybe I have lost a sense of passion, at least the kind that translates into doing something. The kind I remember having in college when we protested about everything -- the Viet Nam war, women's rights, relevancy in classes. We were a passionate generation, everything mattered. Maybe it was being 19, maybe it was the times. Maybe it was having the enormous freedom to go to college and not work full time. Whatever it was, my youth was not wasted on the young! And somehow those passions seemed productive. We were "doing" something -- ending a war, allowing women to keep their own names, reading Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver!

But these days I don't seem to have a passion for running a business or making art -- both things I say I would like to do. Those are productive things. But they are not the things that get me going each morning.

My boundless enthusiasm is the same as it was when I was eight years old. Reading and stories! I love stories, whether a novel, non-fiction work, or movie; any thing that sparks my interest and allows me to put myself into a place or learn about interesting characters. I really love to read. And finish a couple books each week. When my daughter was in kindergarten, the teacher asked her what I did. She replied, "My mom reads books." The teacher, who knew me, said, "Oh, is she a librarian?" My daughter answered yes, which I am. But the truth is, "My mom reads books," is probably the truest thing she could have said about me.

I don't read for a living (tho I did love that Robert Redford's character in Three Days of the Condor actually did get paid by a spy agency to read). I don't have a library job, by choice. So some days, like today, I feel just a bit stuck that the thing I do well, and a lot isn't a job or career and takes up a lot of time I think I should be doing something else.

I wish I had a good conclusion to this post. But that's all I've got. I just wanted to write it out.