Stop seeking passion. It will elude you until it sees you working. What you are passionate about is the thing you are most willing to suffer for, enduring it for 10, 15, 20 years or more.
Passion is the endeavor you cannot stop doing. It consumes you. It doesn’t have to energize you, that’s a myth. It often drains you, but you seldom mind. It’s not something that sparks at just the right moment. You’re confusing passion for lust. There is a time and place for spontaneous ignition, but passion is an arduously slow smoldering burn. You cannot go out and find it because you already carry it with you. Its crucible rests inside you.
Vision is seeded in your fertile mind and birthed by your imagination. You envision a place or condition you want to change or create. You often fail in its pursuit, sometimes publicly. If the vision has no meaning for you, you abandon it, or worse, pursue it mindlessly. Passion is what gives your vision meaning and makes the suffering losses bearable. Those who have acknowledged their passion know the thought of being without it is more terrifying than any suffering it causes.
To nourish your vision, you count on your passion. To nourish your passion, you must take action. You must either act on, decide, or communicate the things that support your vision and passion or else you remain a dreamer, a starving artist ill-equipped to paint.
Action gives your imagination concrete feedback. Action makes you feel productive and satisfied. Passion does not feed you. Action does. Passion does not reward your efforts. Action does.
When you put passion on a pedestal, you rob vision and action of their equal due. If you insist on searching for passion, focus on taking consistent action. Passion will then predictably show itself, like a jealous muse desperate for attention. Acknowledge it, then get back to work.
Also published on Medium.