Finding Your Passion

By Brent Ramirez
Blog Content Contributor

In a world of ever expanding interests and personal identity, there are many things for every individual to find joy in. Whether it’s soccer, skydiving, fly fishing, designing computers, making music or cooking, we all find happiness in different things. But something happens when that happiness is met with an affinity for that particular interest: we develop a passion. 

If you Google “passion,” the first definition you receive is such:

noun. 1. a strong and barely controllable emotion

This overbearing emotion leads you to strive for something deeper than surface level appreciation. As you begin to invest more and more time and effort, you start to understand your interest better which leads to having this unquenchable thirst to know everything about it.

Having a passion is both a gift and a curse. You have a natural inclination to immerse yourself in your passion, causing you to grow into someone with more skill and knowledge in your passion. At the same time, it can turn into an obsession, which may ultimately push you to extremes. Sometimes people destroy themselves striving for perfection, yet despite this, I’ve always believed in the importance of finding your passion.

When you find something you’re passionate about, you not only add to your skills and knowledge, but also to your overall character. I feel that a good amount of people find others extremely attractive when they can ramble on and on about something that fascinates them, or something they love to do. If you’re not one to ramble on, don’t fret. I feel it’s the passion in general not the ability to talk a lot that people enjoy.

If you don’t have a particular passion or don’t really know what yours is, that’s okay as well. While it does take time to develop a passion, I think it’s equally as gratifying to find one later on in your life then it is to be a prodigy of something as a child. Ever so often you’ll find a story of someone bored to death with their day-to-day routine and despite being content, throwing it all away to risk it all on a small unanswered dream from their childhood or an unopened box of curiosity locked away in the depths of their mind. I’m not saying you have to throw everything away in order to pursue something new, but it can be refreshing to put everything down for a minute in order to try something different that interests you. Who knows where it may take you?

I often find myself envious of those bold enough to make it big with their passions, and that’s not a regret I want to have placed upon myself one day. Sure, some may think it’s naive to say “follow your dreams” or “do something you love,” but I think those types of statements offer hope to those drowning in a life of simple contentment. A dream has the potential to turn into a reality, but only if you chose to make it so. To this day, it is my dream to become a singer/songwriter and to hear my lyrics sang back to me by a stadium full of people. For now my music may be something I do on the side, but it’s something I hope I can turn into a career someday.

“Do it with passion or not at all.”

Featured image by Brent Ramirez.