One important lesson I learned quite early in life, and was soundly reinforced while learning to cope with the loss of a spouse, was finding a new passion for life. LeAnne was a good teacher of this principle. I’ve learned that life has no meaning at all, unless I also have a passion to give me purpose for that life. It becomes even more important to me when my passion benefits someone else. A passion is something that drives us. It has to be something strong enough to get us out of bed in the morning, no matter what the weather or our state of mind at the moment. LeAnne’s passion was her family, friends and people in need. Her passion for others kept her going, no matter what the obstacle.
I’ve always admired that in her and I’ve always strived to be better at that myself. Finding something worth being passionate about is not terribly hard. We all have an inkling of what drives us. I think that is something that is innate in all of us. We all have that something special about us. Some people call this part of us, “talents.” Others might call it something else. Though I am re-learning this kind of thing later in life than I would have liked, I am glad that I finally get it once more.
Perhaps we don’t recognize this special thing about ourselves. Others have probably noticed it. I noticed special things about my children as they grew and became adults, even though they didn’t seem to notice them. These things are only part of what gives us joy to see our children mature. Still, like our children, we do not know ourselves enough to say that we have discovered all of our passions yet. I believe we will still be discovering these passions after we leave this life. Perhaps one day, I will learn to play the piano and find a passion for it too. It seems to me, we find purpose in these passions. We will find purpose in life by sharing that special part of us. Purpose will aid us to find happiness.
Since pondering these thoughts over the past few years, I’ve been more mindful of others around me. I’ve seen that my wife Deb has also learned to have new or renewed passions for things in her life. It is fascinating to watch her always trying new things. I have been inspired by her tenacity. When she gets it in her head to do some thing she has never done before, she will find a way to do it. There are things she has done that haven’t been as successful as she had wanted, but the most important and the most influential part to me, was that she had the courage to do it in the first place. She does it no matter the consequence. Many of us lack the courage to get that far.
This adage that says “you can’t teach an old dog new tricks,” is completely false. I know, because I have more than 40 years of bad habits in writing that I am breaking. I am learning a new way. From these realizations, I am learning to be a kid again. I am rekindling a desire to learn and explore. I am learning all over again that it is okay to fail, as long as I learn from it and I keep going. I am learning to have new dreams of the future and to create new maps to take me there. I’m not trying to be a kid again, but I am trying to improve and have a stronger purpose in life. With every new purpose, I find that there are a lot of road blocks and obstacles to cross. Everything meaningful always comes with opposition. It is the nature of good and evil. It is also the nature of learning.
I’m reminded of something that my grandfather once said. We were working on his farm. We were hauling hay and it was starting to rain. I think we all knew that if we didn’t get the hay hauled, Grandpa might have to haul it himself. We wanted to run for the house. Grandpa shouted out “It looks like we’re going to get wet before we get done.” The statement was true, but only if we stayed and finished the job. It occurred to me that I had been wet before. I had been muddy before. It wasn’t so bad. It made things harder by times, but I had survived it. We stayed and finished our load, but that was all we did. By the time we finally got the load on, the field got too wet to drive through. We were lucky to get the truck and our load out. To me the important lesson in the field, was that we didn’t just give up because we had a little opposition.
For Grandpa, at the time, the hay was important. To me, at the time, my grandfather was important. For others it might have been something different. Whatever keeps us going, keeps our attention and inspires us to action, is what we need to find. I write. Someone else plays the organ. Someone else sews. Others are passionately trying to keep up with their children. As long as our passions give us purpose for life, then they will help us through difficult times.
I hope these thoughts help.
Until my next post,
Jene
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