Tim, a close childhood friend of mine, recently married a Korean American woman named Suwha. She was a lawyer for five years at Hale & Dorr, one of the best law firms in Boston… and she hated it. She quit the firm last year a month before her wedding and now is taking a hiatus to figure out what she wants to do next. At a family gathering at Christmas, Suwha told me that in the Korean culture, having and pursuing an articulated passion is a critically important component of one’s life. Her parents are both professors and have thrown themselves into their academic lives with the vigor and intensity that is customary in that culture. Suwha felt somewhat stressed out that she couldn’t identify her “one main passion” that she wanted to pursue with her all. I don’t blame her… what a lot of pressure! But not having and following a passion in South Korea translates into a character flaw at best and a failure at worst.

I think I would probably feel like a failure if I were a South Korean. I’m not totally sure what my general passions are – let alone being able to identify one main overarching one.

“Passion” according to dictionary.com is “a strong or extravagant fondness, enthusiasm, or desire for anything.” My husband is a person of evident passion – though he tends to be serially passionate about different topics across time. For the past three years, his main passion has been farming. He just adores it. He thinks about it all the time; reads about it virtually daily (books and blogs); and uses nearly all his spare time to work or plan work on our farm . Any fool could see that farming is his passion.

I don’t have a passion of this type – something that consumes me or compels me to that degree. I don’t think this is necessarily bad; he and I are just have different personality types. He is wired to be a “throw yourself in with both feet and forget all else” type of person, and I’m not.
But I do have a “strong fondness or enthusiasm” for several different things, and I guess these could be considered my passions… So here they are.

Relationships. I have always been a very relational person. I like people and find it natural and gratifying to develop deep connections with individuals, learning and sharing thoughts, beliefs, and feelings. Since I talk quite a lot, this typically happens with relative ease for me. My natural propensity is also to stay in touch with people, so many of my friendships date back for years or decades. So I feel passion for the people I care about in my life, and for maintaining my connection to them. This is true of my family probably more so than anyone else (my nuclear family and family of origin.)

Writing. I can’t imagine not writing. I have always enjoyed writing and find it flows quickly and fairly easily for me… sort of like the talking, I guess! I usually have words at my fingertips, ready to go. I’ve kept a journal of one type or another since I was in grade school; my current version is a Word document that I started in Oct 2001 and is now more than 200 pages. It’s a way that I process life sort through my thoughts and emotions. Much of my consulting work involves writing, which is one reason that job is a good fit for me. And many of my friendships are maintained over years through letters and emails. I have played around with some more formal types of writing too with an eye toward publication… In the back of my mind, I have often thought that I would enjoy writing a book at some stage in my life, when the time is right.

Personal histories. I like to record life as it happens, and I’ve kept a scrapbook since I was 16. My books aren’t really pretty, they usually aren’t decorative, and don’t even contain many photographs. They are mostly filled with ticket stubs, invitations, notes, letters – items from my life that are meaningful to me. Since I got involved with Creative Memories, virtually all the scrapbooks I’ve made have been gifts for other people centered around their personal histories. I am currently doing one for my father-in-law, who will be 85 this summer, and I’ve interviewed him about WWII and all manner of things from life in the early 1900’s. I was a college history major, and capturing personal life stories in this way seems to be how I’ve adopted living history in my own life.

Running. I enjoy running, but I’m not really passionate about running for its own sake. I love running because of how alive it makes me feel. Something about being outside and connecting with the earth and sky awakens something in me. The continuous motion and changing scenery is therapeutic, and usually if I take a long enough run, I can think and pray better than in almost any other setting. My best observations and ideas often come to me when I’m running.