Scott Free Thinking

Recently I was sitting down having a cup of hot chocolate with my good friend Kellie and we were both talking about our future plans. As it turns out, not everyone is aware of what it is they would like to do with their life in the future. In addition, many will achieve or reach a point in their life in which they consider their dreams to have “come true.” But what happens beyond that? What happens if you have no dreams? People often do not have a solid direction all of the time during their young adult life. It becomes important, after so long, to realize that a focused, concentrated direction can help give basis to motivation and intensity, or passion. Passion cannot exist without the factor of intensity. But how is such a thing really created, from scratch?

At first glimpse, it might not seem like a difficult question to answer, but upon further examination of the entire idea, it begins to feel remarkably hard to come up with a concrete, one-size-fits-all solution to the problem - what creates intensity? What creates passion? Is it our surroundings and environment? Is it something we’re born with? Is it our own emotional choice? Is it something else other than all of these things entirely?

I spend most of my free time working on this website, writing music, making films, creating pictures, designing clothes - all very creative activities. And the website’s coined tagline, where creativity is destiny may or may not be spot on accurate; I’ve been creative since a small child, but to say that it was entirely my doing would be discrediting my older brothers and his friends. I spent most of my childhood creating stories using action figures as the actors, and my eyes were the simple camera lens. I’d spend Halloween or times shortly before then dressing up as comic book heroes and would seriously worry about the details of every saga when creating my own stories. Before I was even out of elementary school I had written my first story over 100 pages long. All of this happened, I think, because I was surrounded by an intellectually creative environment.

Creativity is not something central to just the activities of creation. Creativity can happen in the mind, and it can happen in the body. Perhaps not a coincidence, I was interested in tap dancing during ages 8-11, a more physical form of creativity. In deciding what to do after high school, it has not been much of a challenge to determine the course of my desired path - I’d like to pursue something creative, and part of me even feels that it may not even matter what it is, so long as I have the freedom to make it the way I see it. I’ve thought about degrees that are geared toward game design, business administration, computer programming, but I ultimately decided on psychology. All of those topics, you notice, can be very interrelated. So in this self analysis - it seems sort of obvious to me that I’m an individual that has been oriented toward a certain direction for years at a time, even since early childhood.

Here are some things we do know about environment and about inheritance, or genetics. We know that while genetics create the basis for certain characteristics we experience from the day we are born, environment is the catalyst for determining how those genetics will interact with the self. Your environment can create the bulk of your personality in what you do, say, and even think. If a young girl is surrounded with a dancing community from the day she is born, whether she is designed for dancing or not genetically she is at least probably going to take a long, prolific attempt at it.

But there is a problem with simply pointing the finger at how a person has grown up. It just does not fit the place of every individual, or maybe not even close to every individual.

In the conversation I mentioned having with Kellie at the beginning: Kellie had little idea of why it is she has decided, “I’d like to be a personal trainer.” She has been in kickboxing and has been doing physical activities for five years, but has also said she does not feel that strongly about it. It is a situation where she may like the path, but she is not in love with it. Instead, she describes it simply as something she largely feels comfortable doing.

Kelly exhibits a lot of common traits of an intelligent person. She stays completely focused and dedicated to making excellent grades in college, and was of course the same way through high school. She takes good care of her body through kickboxing, and exercises every single day. She goes to bed at a reasonable hour, and all in all plays life safe. Heck, on the personal development front, she seems to have a splendid blend of balance, harmony, success, and happiness in her life. Love, money, and general prosperity are, with little doubt, soon to follow.

But is every person who is successful so calm and mellow? Does harmony and balance necessarily mean the lack of stronger feelings? Of course not! We also know that highly successful (and smart) people come from all walks of life, and we also know that even those who are not, in their habits, successful they still manage to stumble onto riches. The passionate are often the most dedicated, and this is mainly why passion is so important.

Perhaps passion, in its definition, can be described in different varying degrees. The definition as it stands right now is an interesting one. The word, “passion,” is often used in two different kinds of scenarios during conversation. 1.) It is used to describe general emotions and feelings. 2.) It is used to describe love, lust, or personal desire for another person. In Christianity, “the Passion,” is used to describe Jesus’ suffering leading up to his crucifixion. However, passion is a common use word when it comes to personal development, and it is considered a vital key to virtually anything you are talking about in terms of goal setting/achieving, self manifestation, self actualization, and so on. Passion can make anything easier to face, if you can develop passion for whatever it is.

What is interesting to note is that most definitions of the word center around feelings that, when it comes to an emotional perspective, are all very unstable, risky, dangerous, or even at times harmful. Passion can refer to the emotional state of love or hate, the two extremes on two opposite poles of the emotional spectrum. Love can easily be lost under the right conditions, hate can ruin the self and whoever is receiving hatred. Love can lead to broken hearts, and in traditional American society(and other places), love is even often associated with a sort of romantic obsessive posessiveness. In order for passion to be a positive thing, it often will have to be oriented toward something positive by nature. To say one has a “passion for taxes” might also mean one will lead an unstable, shaky, and at times miserable life.

So in thinking about trying to answer this original question, I cannot reach any solid conclusion as to, ‘what creates passion,’ but what I can conclude is the practicality of passion in everyday life. In some places, passion is vital. In other places, passion is perhaps best left out. In terms of balance, harmony, and leading a happy life, passion can easily be described as something that is arbitrary; sometimes feeling calm and comfortable while accepting events that unfold is simply the best solution; no obsession or intensity required.

Perhaps among that mix of nature versus nurture, or genetics versus environment, we can say that some are born and simultaneously conditioned to be rigid in their emotional, passionate structure, while others are similarly without that quality. The new question becomes: is passion necessary for you?