Summer Dreaming and Passion

Passion.  Such a strong word.  A gusty word.  No mild-mannered emotion, passion bursts all out enthusiasm, untethered live out love, and vibrant multi-colored energy.  Passion is not a word to be tossed about lightly.

I've been spending some meditative moments gazing at my dream board.  Propped there behind my computer, its geography invites reflection.  Making it, I thumbed through pages of magazines to find each of those seven letters - P A S S I O N - all roughly the same size, all blue but for one orange.  I cut and glued each, stretched the full width of my board and swept across the swirled glitter paint sky.

 

P  A  S  S  I  O  N

 

So why?  A dream board reinforces your dreams, hopes, desires - daring them all to come true by virtue of your attention and daily notice of their very existence.  So why?  Why did I meticulously place those letters there?  How does passion fill my dreams and fly my skies?  Do I want to find it or feel it?  For what or for whom?  Did I glue those letters there because P A S S I O N is lacking in my life?  Did I have it once only to later lose it?

 

Intentional and attentional living requires sustained effort.  All hands on deck, oars in the water, rowing in the same direction effort.  We are what we think.  We are what we do.  What we dream. 

 

P A S S I O N is technicolor, we're-not-in-Kansas-anymore dreaming.  I live with passion when I live intentionally and attentionally. To whom and to what will I give my time, my energy, my attention?  What thoughts, what actions will earn my devotion?  Does one first begin a passion-filled relationship with and for others before fully understanding and actualizing the self?

 

Maybe passion is fleeting - a momentary gust of wind across our sky - flying our kites on a sunny summer afternoon.  Here today.  Gone tomorrow.  Yet may return the next day in a new form - an angry storm of passion perhaps - dark and deep and thunderous.

 

Maybe daring to dream out loud leads to our life's passions.  Plural.  What I feel passionate about on Monday may ebb  by Tuesday and Wednesday's passion stirs a whole new pot.

 

Sure.  I feel long-term passionate about my marriage, my children, my family, my teaching.  But maybe passion is also a flash of emotion, a lightning-bolted moment of fervor - unsustainable in day to day to day living.

 

Maybe passion is something to be on the look out for.  Keep watch.  Be at the ready.