Q: How do you find your passion?

Q: How do you find your passion?

by Stan Faryna

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U2, Beautiful Day

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Passion, purpose, and signs have led me to and fro, up and down. I have observed too that we all tend to give all that we have for a disappointing safety, convenience and comfort.

Three steps back follow every step forward. The cheat is not to take more or bolder steps forward.
character count: 100

The cheat is to hold the line against petty fears. Make smaller steps backward with much reluctance.
character count: 100

Fear God, but nothing else.

What God? The God whose mouth will speak with swords. The God that hates deceits, broken oaths, and betrayal. The God that makes history. The God that cries for our heartlessness, humiliations, and sorrows.

Fear nothing else. In other words, do the right thing and be not afraid. And that is easier said than done. I know.

We were meant to move. Hearts and minds have a celestial motion. Also bodies. Even stars! They move.
character count: 100

Stubbornly, we refuse to move without incentives speaking immediately to our delight and advantage
character count: 100

This is our prejudice and we can only overcome our prejudice through more noble habits than the vicissitudes that nurture our enlightened narcissism.

Prudence, courage, justice, and temperance – they are just a few of the instruments of celestial motion. And true passion, I believe, is a celestial motion.

Amusements, delight, and excitement are neither trustworthy guides nor the ends to which our individual destiny’s seek. Delights are merely dim approximations and incomplete metaphors of the splendor of greater things. Like a light bulb is to daylight.

As an end, delight will never substitute for the beautiful, the good, and the true.

Sure, I like delight as much as anyone else. And hence, I understand the problem as clearly as do you.

Aristotle taught these things. His student, Alexander the Great, conquered the world. Thomas Aquinas also spoke to our calling. Though his Summa is a moveable feast of epiphanies, the sheer word count, however, is so much larger than our own patience and ambition.

As my friend, Billy Delaney observes, there are few books, tried and true, and packed with more wisdom than the book of Job. In fact, we lack for neither information nor insight. None.

Who are you? Knowing what you are, what shall you hope and how shall you live?

This is the order in which these questions must be asked and answered. You cannot put the cart in front of the horse. Because it does not move when the cart is put in front of the horse.

Alone in your pride and prejudice, you will never answer these questions well.

Worse, you may never take the time to scratch the surface of these eternal questions -questions that, undoubtedly, the first man and woman also felt moving in their hearts.

Alone or in bad company, even the taste of good answers cannot be lived fully and passionately.

Such are the perils of self-defeat and -conceit.

Or do you consider that I am greatly mistaken?

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Stan Faryna
22 February 2012
Bucharest, Romania

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P.S.

This essay began as a comment to Craig McBreen – specifically to his illumination on living out one’s passion. Thank you, Craig, for moving me to speak my heart on a matter of great importance.

If you are wondering about what happened to blog soup, you can read about why I shut down the soup kitchen.

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