The only thing I can teach you...live with passion.

"They may forget what you said, but they will never forget how you made them feel."
- Carl W. Buechner

I find life to be an interesting uphill battle, one where you are bound to lose friends and family along the way. Many times the fight might not seem worth it...goodness knows that I have wanted to just sit down on more than one occasion...be content with where I had landed, but something in me strives me to keep pushing. I have discovered that this uphill battle has plateaus and often times those plateaus are harder to get across than getting up the hill and that is when we decide that we are content with our lives the way they are and we quit fighting. I feel the second we stop fighting, stop pushing forward, the second we set aside our passion we have failed ourselves.

I have had an interesting life, I am grateful at times for this and other times it doesn't seem fair to me, but one thing that I have learned from the amazing women who have walked before me is that if you put off what you want to do, if you set aside the passion for every day moments, if you tell yourself that you will fulfill your passions later...later will never come and you will never get a chance to do what you want. I am not saying that every day moments cannot be passionate...because they can...but often times we forget that they can.

I want to point out for you that may have some sort of misconception of what the word passion means, it means... any powerful or compelling emotion or feeling. Powerful or compelling. How many of us dare to live our lives filled with powerful and compelling moments? Something that brings us joy and pain? Something that will save a relationship or change our entire life view? So often times I feel that our society is lulled into a sense of complacency...one where fighting for something we want or loving to strongly is just not acceptable...and when you do, you are considered odd. Where walking away is easier...

My question is why? Why can't we love and fight and take from life what we want...what is going to bring us happiness and pain? (Pain btw....is a very necessary part of life...without it you could not experience true happiness.) I think many of us are scared by to much intensity...to much feeling. I am not different...often times I am scared to death to take life by the horns and do what I want. But what I need to remember and what I want to pass on to you is that, if we let our fear take away our passion then we will be left with an empty and hollow life. I don't know about you...but that scares me far more than living passionatly. I am may fail at whatever I end up trying...but if I fail I will have that adventure to remember it by...something I would have not had if I had let the fear stop me from even making an effort.

So my dear friend...take a step back from your everyday life and ask yourself...what brought you happiness like you have never experienced since? Who drives you nuts but at the end of the day makes you a better person? What would you do if you had no constraints? What brings you happiness? Pain? What makes you dance around your house and laugh like a loon? Who is the first person you think of when you wake up? The last person you think of as you fall to sleep? Just think about it for a second....deep breath...go and live life. Be passionate because the only constraints in this world...are the ones we put on ourselves. Life is way to short to be passionate tomorrow...be passionate today.

"Passion, it lies in all of us, sleeping...waiting...and though unwanted...unbidden...it will stir...opens its jaws and howl. It speaks to us...guides us...passion rules us all, and we obey. What other choice do we have? Passion is the source of our finest moments. The joy of love...the clarity of hatred...and the ecstasy of grief. It hurts sometimes more than we can bear. If we could live without passion maybe we'd know some kind of peace...but we would be hollow...Empty rooms shuttered and dank. Without passion we'd be truly dead."
-Joss Whedon