Word of Wisdom: Passion
“On life's vast ocean diversely we sail. Reason the card, but passion the gale.” Alexander Pope
In one of my favorite films, the protagonist is on the cusp of signing a lucrative professional soccer contract when a personal tragedy derails his career. Years later, his father reflects upon the events of the past and mournfully sighs to a friend, “Sin pasión, no se puede jugar fútbol.” Without passion, you can’t play soccer.
I wonder: without passion, can you fully live life?
For the stoics and skeptics among us, the immediate answer might be a resounding “yes”. One might argue that cool, precise reason ought to fulfill our needs, not the hot, wild swings of our passion. But as Pope poetically pontificated, it is passion that catalyzes movement. Reason, powerful as it is, can only turn the rudder. It can steer, but not propel. The brain needs the heart and vice versa, but only the heart can move the lifeblood of the body.
Perhaps some of the resistance to the part passion has to play lies in misdefining its nature. To be “passionate”, to “follow one’s passion”, has often meant (to both speaker and hearer) a pursuit of some new interest, a quest for meaning, or fidelity to an issue or idea one has alighted upon. It’s often likened to zeal, which is an ardor or enthusiasm for some particular goal or course of action.
That’s not an objectively bad thing, of course; though, in practice, one person’s zeal is often another person’s lunacy.
But passion is not zeal.
Coming down to us from the Latin passionem, meaning “suffering” or “enduring”, passion is at root a form of suffering, an enduring of some experience that, once culminated, results in a long-hoped-for end. Indeed, for centuries in Latin, and later in English, the word passion was a specific reference to the suffering and death of the Messiah. “The passion of the Christ on the Cross” was the singular use and meaning of the term.
Passion, then, motivates us not through an eager interest or enthusiasm, but through a deep-seated aching, a piercing longing, for something that lies on the other side of an event or period of time. It is the difference between lighter fluid and burning embers: the former with its flames leaping high and bright, but not long or hot, and the latter with its dim light but intense, enduring heat. Zeal is a superficial spectacle; passion, an internal energy.
But there’s yet another manner in which passion is misidentified, leading to error and excess. To experience passion means to endure a suffering, yes, but that is distinct from a state of woundedness, with its injury and hence fundamental longing for a return to a state of wholeness.
True, woundedness too can fuel movement and propel toward what appears to be progress. Recently I read an article about one of the most successful football coaches in history, in which the coach’s biographer summarized his many championships as simply “a continual effort to prove to his father he has what it takes.” Such a quest for emotional fulfillment looks successful from a safe distance, until the curtain is pulled back and the daily fruits of such festering wounds are viewed up close.
Woundedness, we could say, drives forward in the hopes of internal voids being satisfied. Passion’s aim is fixed on an external horizon, enduring with patience (from the same Latin root; we might call it “long-suffering”) the journey toward an end that exists beyond the self.
Recently, I experienced such a transcendent aim: the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro. And during the ascent, it slowly became clear to me the mountain was a metaphor, the expedition a symbolic experience. From the precise preparation, to the taxing travel; from small injuries to intense altitude sickness; from the lonely mental exercises to the collective sharing of physical exertion…all represented aspects of passion’s preeminence in our undertakings.
And upon reflection, three attributes of passion came into focus.
1. Passion is rooted in relationship.
I found myself on “the roof of Africa” because of my wife. Her bucket list item became our shared endeavor over the months of training, weeks of packing, and days of trekking. Ultimately, my passion—my animating longing—was to summit in order to support her in achieving her goal. I was there with, and because of, her.
So it is with other passions. We ache for justice because we know people who have been harmed by injustice. We labor in conservation efforts because we have a connection to a place and its inhabitants. We pour out physical, mental, and emotional energy in our parenting because we are bonded to our children and envision their safety and growth. We persevere for years because we have an unwavering belief in the value of that invention or enterprise.
Even the Creator yearns to have compassion on those he knows—he is passionate for those with whom he shares relationship. That similarity—a propensity toward relationship-rooted passion—is one of the ways we bear the divine image.
2. Passion perseveres through winding ups and downs.
Summiting a mountain is not a linear undertaking, nor is it free of surprises, no matter how careful the planning. A route necessarily winds around obstacles old and new, and the altitude requires that some days you “climb high and sleep low” to gradually acclimatize, even at the cost of expending energy to retrace a certain amount of terrain. Unpredictable weather, gear problems, injuries and altitude effects can require constant problem-solving…and perseverance.
Passion—a suffering for a thing that is yet to be realized—endures the hardships of the journey because it can see the summit in the distance. Even when others can’t, even when clouds roll in to shroud it from everyone, the painfulness of putting one foot in front of the other is endured because of the longing for what is to come.
The Redeemer himself endured suffering because of the joy of the vision set before him. Indeed, as mentioned above, his is the original passion.
3. Passion has both an ascent and a descent—and neither is a solitary endeavor.
Many people made it possible for us to summit Kili: family members providing childcare and other resources; guides and porters expertly supporting the climb; the company and park service responsible for the logistics.
But after the mountain is summited, it also has to be descended. In my case, this too required significant assistance. A team of twenty helped us up, and after the onset of altitude sickness at the summit, they helped me down, quite literally. With my arms around the shoulders of two other men because of my foggy head and wobbly legs, we made it back to Barafu camp, where rest and oxygen were strictly administered. Only then could I once again walk unaided.
Ascending the mount of passion is not a “free solo”; neither, it turns out, is the descent. We need others—to join us, to advise us, to sharpen us, and sometimes to carry us. Once we reach the heights that passion has been directing us toward, we need those same people to help us down, to enter again the valley where life is lived—because it can’t be lived at 20,000 feet.
That might be an element of the “suffering” passion entails: we have to leave the summit and come back down, which is no small feat.
Yet it’s one that we can accomplish…together.