Everyone from Oprah to high school teachers challenge us to find our passions these days. People are passionate about dance, fishing, even cupcakes. A question arises: If we have to find it, are we passionate about it? If passion is strong emotion, we oughta notice, wouldn’t you think?
I know, I know, sometimes we tune out, turn down the volume, lose touch with our own emotions and drives. That’s what the search for passion is all about. That, and learning to trust what we know about ourselves.
Me, I’m passionate about words. It has recently dawned on me that we’re diluting the word passion with our overuse of it.
Where did we get passion, and what does it tell us from its heritage?
Pathos was the name of the ancient Phoenician god of desire. Just across the Aegean Sea in Greece pathos meant suffering. The Romans had a similar word passus, meaning having suffered. (Ever notice how often desire and suffering go together?) From there the word traveled through the French and Old English to become our passion. Today my edition of Webster’s contains six related meanings of passion, from suffering as in the Passion of Christ to the object of fondness. Fondness, mind you. I’m fond of mushroom omelets. Wide range, wouldn’t you say?
At its bones, our word passion means a desire for which one would suffer and die, a commitment on which we stake everything. However much I enjoy words and desire to use them truthfully and elegantly, I am not passionate about them.
Or am I? Sometimes making words work borders on suffering, yet the desire is still there.
Is truth at stake? Are people at stake? Or am I selling a cereal, a car, a website?
What’s your passion? What, or whom, are you so committed to that you would suffer and even die?
