Passion

What a strong word right? I am not going to lie; every single time I hear this word I instantly cringe. I feel like passion is lately only being used in the context of finding your beloved prince or princess in order to live happily ever after. However, what does passion really mean?

What is passion?

If you go to the Cambridge dictionary online it says that passion is “a very powerful feeling, for example of love, hate, sexual attraction, anger or other emotions". But I feel this definition is not complete. Passion is what makes the world around us develop and become better place. It is everywhere. When we’re growing up, we’re always asked “what are you passionate about? What do you want to work as when you grow up?”. Which would personally stress me so much as at the time I did not feel that extreme sensation of passion towards any subject I was studying, what I was never told is that you can create your own passion.

How to find your passion?

As said previously I have always found maths and physics fun to understand and study, but in Year 13 you would never have seen me reading anything related to that. As I got to University and exam session, I started to push myself to do that little bit of extra reading the lecturers always advise us to do, and after doing that I realised I had chosen the right degree. I don’t want to seem like a nerd or anything, but if you think about it this is applicable for everything. If you find roller skating cool, but you never practice and you never try new jumps, how on earth are you going to know if that is your passion? My advice for you is to not stress out if you aren't sure what your passion is but have your eyes always open for new opportunities and always try them out. It can always be fun or at least a good story to tell 😊 Never forget we all here have a collective passion which is to reach happiness.

What about passion related to people?

I believe this is one of the most important passions every single human being has in their lives. PASSION TOWARDS PEOPLE. Passion towards our friends, families and partners. This passion can drive through the hardest moments. The night before an assessment when you realise you know half of the topics you should know and you may just want to quit, never forget how much your parents have loved you and all of the effort they have made in order for you to be where you are right now. Passion towards your friend making him/her believe they can do anything and maybe motivate them to open that business they have always dreamed of. Passion to believe that all humans are good people and just need someone to believe in them. This magic spirit that makes people do amazing this.

Managing your passion

Passion is such a strong feeling so we have to be careful; we can't be like Romeo and Juliet, where passion ended up making them commit suicide. Obviously, this is an extremely dramatic (and cringy) scenario, but it explains my point; we must be in control (roughly) of our passion, we can't let this sensation drag us and absorb our lives. Not only that, but we also can't let our passion fade away, leaving us with a weird feeling of failure.  To manage this, set yourself weekly goals: “this week I’m going to learn a new cooking recipe” and always set yourself a certain amount of time. Have a record of your progress and you will notice the difference in some months' time. What are you waiting for? Start now!