A couple of weeks ago, I took a drive out to a part of the Maine coast that I'd never been to, and is my usual wont, my camera was in the seat next to me. And it was about an hour or so into the drive that I realized I hadn't pulled it out of the sling bag I bought for it and taken pictures of any sort in close to two years.
It's been just as long since I felt truly motivated and interested enough to sit down and try writing a piece of fiction.
It's been even longer since I felt anywhere near what I did when I started my pursuit of the career I'd wanted since I was old enough to know it was what I wanted to do with my life.
There were so many things I used be so passionate about when I was younger. So many things that I was interested in and cared enough about that I remember spending time I should've been doing other things being wholly fixated on my passions instead. It's the narrative we tell ourselves when we're young and idealistic — cultivating and building the treasure map that we think will lead us to the place we all want to end up at by the time we have to finally grow up.
We're going to have that career, write that book, travel to those exotic destinations, marry that person and live that life we want so badly for ourselves, because otherwise...what the hell else is the point of living in the first place?
Earlier today, I saw the news that someone I used to work with and someone I considered a friend back in the day got a true dream job that essentially sets him on that course for life. On the one hand, it's impossible for me not to be anything but happy for him. When we met, we were both struggling to find our feet in an environment where our bosses took neither of our passions for the work we both did and wanted to do seriously.
Success didn't come overnight for him, either. He had to do what a lot of people in our line of work do, which is embrace the mercenary life and bounce around the country between whatever jobs we can find. There were personal setbacks and situations he had to overcome as well, and there were a few times when the frustration became almost too much.
But because he managed to find people who saw value in his passion and the lengths he'd go to hold onto it, opportunities opened up that paved the way for the success that he genuinely worked his ass off to attain, culminating in the news he got this morning.
It's hard not to be happy for someone who's had to fight to earn something like that. On the other hand though, it's also impossible not to be anything but absolutely livid about the fact that such things never seemed to be even a consideration for me, no matter how strong my passions to reach the same heights were or what I was willing to do to see them realized.
The single most fatal malady that can utterly destroy a person's passion for just about anything is being told that it doesn't matter how bad you want it or how hard you push yourself to get it, you'll never reach it — usually because someone in an arbitrary position of authority is more interested in chopping your legs out from under you for whatever arbitrary reason they deign to come up with, and they could care less about the damage they're inflicting in the process, either.
I know I'm far from the first person who's had to face that reality, nor will I be the last. The world is full of us. People who were so passionate about so many things, only to be told we're not special enough to have them.
Have that happen enough times and the world starts to lose a lot of its luster. The color fades out of it and it just becomes a seemingly endless drab, gray morass of imposed mediocrity and low expectations that you force yourself to navigate through just to continue existing. Inevitably, it gets to the point where you just don't care anymore, because the energy it takes to find the passion that's been emotionally beaten out of you through the seemingly endless repetition of disappointment, defeat, rejection and outright denial of what you want doesn't come back.
It's why I have a whole stack of notebooks filled with stories I once planned to write, but I can't write them.
It's why I have a head full of things I want to say...but I can't say them anymore.
It's why it feels like I have this black hole where my heart used to be...because I can't care about anyone anymore.
It's why I had a whole life's worth of things I wanted to see and do, but I know I'll likely never see or do any of them.
The passion I used to have for life wanting to live it to the fullest was taken away because I was so determined to get there that I pushed myself until it broke me. And yet, if you asked me back then if I'd go through it all again in the hope that maybe the result will be different and I'll know that life actually can be fair to all of us...?
I know I'd say Bring it on.
Such is what passion can do to a person before their ambition and drive to be great are beaten out of them.
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