Capital P passion

I love my job!

Here’s the thing about passion: there are pieces that will be faulty, broken, junky but passion turns those things into opportunity. It notices the discombobulations while seeking solutions and hope in the same breath. I think passion is often derived from some sort of conflict.

One time when I was in Tennessee camping, I built a fire out of the scraps of the forest floor. It was the weakest, silliest, shortest lived fire but I loved every part of it. I think this is how passion starts in people. Usually you need some sort of fire starter, built by scraps, the heat doesn’t last long until it’s revisited and thick oak logs are added. The ‘spark’ of passion.

I used to think that you could only be passionate about one thing at a time. Truly passionate. Then I went to Ghana and I discovered that passion exists in everything you love. It’s no longer a rare idea but an everyday push for better things to come. This doesn’t somehow make passion any less profound, however. It’s almost like practicing an instrument. Learning how to be more and more passionate about things of this world. Passion teaches you how to be a better human being. Caring and striving for something teaches your heart to care and strive for someone. Motivating people to go out of their way to care for the emotional, physical, and spiritual needs other than their own; the same type of motivation for ideas, things, newness, that strikes passion in most people. It’s simply caring enough to do something about it.

I encounter many types of personalities in my profession everyday. It has now become easy for me to look at someone standing in front of a patient, and determine if they will see and try and love them in that bundled, bleached space. But damn, do I love my job.