Passion

I used the word passion lately in a manuscript. My daughter used it this week in conversation. Both references were to teachers.

As a romance writer, I have used the word more often. In my early days of publishing, I not only used it, I had to show it. It wasn't all that comfortable, but it was part of the business. That's changed over the years. While many books are heavy on passion, others aren't at all.

Except that they are. Trying to figure out how to explain that, I did what all googlephiles do; I looked it up. My thanks to Mr. Merriam and Mr. Webster for helping me out with this.

Passion describes the sufferings of Christ. I didn't always understand why the story of the final week of his life was presented as the Passion Play. It was hard for me to watch then and still is. It wasn't until this week that I knew suffering was one of the definitions of passion. It is, M-W says, obsolete now.

Passion is defined as emotion. I got that easily; I don't read and write romance for nothing. We have passion down. Except then, M-W used as an example of a passion the word greed. Oh, please, Mr. M and Mr. W, greed is a perversity, not a passion, isn't it?

There are other meanings. An outbreak of anger. Ardent affection. Devotion. Sexual desire. (I knew that one would be in there.) Probably the one I most understood was the word's use as a noun, an object of desire or deep interest.

That has to be the most passionless description possible.

But the reason I wrote about this was to explore how we see passion. I feel so lucky that writing has been a passion for me since I was nine years old and it has never wavered. Even years past retirement age, I don't see an end in sight. Not that the quality is the same, nor is the focus or the speed or even the spelling, but the passion is still there.

My husband seldom plays music on a stage anymore, but he still plays it every day at home. Every day.

Do we both miss being as good at our creative passions as we once were? You betcha. But we are also grateful, as we are for each other. Things change, the the devotion remains.

I admit that while I liked my job, I wasn't passionate about it. I like sewing, but it's not a passion, other than being passionately irritated when I'm ripping stuff out that I messed up to begin with. I can go weeks without sewing, and when I start again, I have to regain the feel for fabric, for pattern, for rhythm, whereas whenever I sit with a computer screen in front of me, my hands automatically know what to do. So does my heart. I guess that's the difference.

Passion leads us sometimes, which doesn't really sound all that responsible, but I think it is. It can make us better at what we do. Teachers, doctors, nurses, police officers, and firefighters--anyone whose work serves and can affect so many others--need to feel passion for what they do and the people they're doing it for. If the passion is lost in the detritus of how those jobs affect the people doing them--they are hard and demanding jobs--maybe it's time to change, or go on hiatus.

Easy to say, right? Yeah, it kind of is--like those people who say "if you don't like it, quit," even when they know you have kids, a mortgage, and a car payment. I know you just can't walk away forever, but I hope you can find the passion that brought you to the dance, even if it means moonlighting at something else.

Well, as usual, this has ended up being scattered and sort of late. If anyone asks you if there's a moral to today's story, just say No, because I think I lost whatever I might have intended it to be. My computer got weird on me this morning and I had to have a Geek Squad intercession. I use the word intercession because the ease with which he fixed a problem that overwhelmed me made me more fully understand intercessory prayer and its value.

There. See? I have a passion for writing and a separate one just for words, and I've used them both this morning. A good start to the day. I hope you identify and use your own passions this week, and if their use is going to do harm, I hope you rethink that.

Have a good one--it's beautiful October. Be nice to somebody.