Book Excerpt: Passionate Tomorrows
When we ‘deeply care’ about something, as the saying goes, it leads to a level of passion. To me, passion is an overused word, especially in business, and wrongly used at that. Passion can come in the form of enjoyment through love, which is healing, but passion as it is used today means to find an idea, job, or other thing in your environment that you deeply focus on, presumably to become an expert. Then passion moves away from enjoyment and into supplication, causing us to over-heat from over-exposure sending us into the arms of the wrong energy, like a tawdry romance novel — but in business, it’s more of a bro-mance than romance. Expertise provides a sense of security for some as they “know what they’re talking about,” but it also makes life dull in a world of so many different colors and ways of being. Some call it being a fox or a hedgehog, which makes no sense to me, but for the time being, a hedgehog represents being interested in many different things, being a generalist. A fox represents being an ‘expert’ in something that focuses you on just one thing or behavior. Creativity is my expertise, but I consider myself a creative generalist. Creative generalists over-brim with ideas about all different types of things and find joy in all the things creative.
There is a criminal justice aspect to the word passion as people commit ‘crimes of passion’ that leave us reeling when we hear about them. ‘Passion projects’ in business are often allocated to men, while women pick up the slack for all the other things left undone. Men are thought of as heroes for their single-minded focus on one thing, like Steve Jobs who was known for his passion. Women’s passion turns into the Greek tragedy, Medea, where her passion leads her to kill her children whom she loves very much. Martha Stewart is a 21st-century example of Medea as she was forced to kill her creative baby by being sent to jail for 5 months just for being a passionate, female entrepreneur and billionaire, moving her into the realm of crimes of passion. Many Greek tragedies involve people being overly passionate and it often ends with someone dying. Think about that the next time you write in your bio how passionate you are about something. Are you willing to die for your passion? Yikes, I hope not!
Deeply caring or being passionate about something binds you up, making you constipated, unable to focus on the truth or let it flow freely. Yes, that’s a gross analogy, but ‘passion’ as it is used is grossly misunderstood and grossly annoying and it serves as a way to make media outlets money. They cue into the hyperbole of the word passion and like to broadcast it as a good story; crimes of passion are always front-page news. Our passion for something can lead us to a sense of lack if we don’t feel it is returning the right amount of love or care. It can cause us to be perfectionists of our making because we believe, as a passionate person, that there is only one right way to do ‘the thing.’ Perfectionism is a one-point perspective on something that gives you tunnel vision and it makes for stilted party conversation because you have nothing else to talk about. It is a form of a tidal locking sequence that we will understand later, but we can find ourselves broken if we don’t break the ties that bind first.
Passion puts us in supplication to our enemies and binds us up with their wills. An enemy is a different kind of relationship, but it is a relationship. We are bound to that person, thought, or situation to effect change in our lives, like a superhero story. Who would Superman, Spiderman, Batman, or the whole collective be without their enemies? They don’t need sidekicks to help them understand who they are, they just need to look outward at who is coming towards them. “Oh, the Joker’s here again, I better suit up and do my thing.” Otherwise, Batman is a listless billionaire who has nothing better to do than make cars, bat mobiles, and other tech. Hmmm… sounds familiar… Batman needs an enemy to exist and is a vigilante who fights for truth and justice against the bad guys for the love of it, so in our minds, he’s passionate about what he does for a living.
Is your ‘tomorrow of passion’ just one unending stream of lack or are you willing to look up and find something new in your life? Do your passions lead to tomorrow or do they keep you in supplication today? Passion in business is the type of Flow I call a flood and is discussed in Part 2. It takes over all aspects of life and leaves others in your life feeling hung out to dry. It leads to an unreality that lets other important things fall away while you focus on your passion. You might need a shower for two days, old bits of moldy food scattering your desk, laundry piling up, calls unanswered, bills unpaid - but, hey, you’re passionate about what you do, so there you go.
Passion is an intensity of focus that leads to the inability to be idle. We know from a previous chapter that being idle is creative because it allows unfocused behaviors and thoughts to break through, shuttling our creative thoughts from our unconscious and subconscious to a conscious level. This form of rest is necessary for our creative existence and doesn’t have to mean being still. You can exercise, do some yard work, take a shower (for goodness sake!), or any other type or form of activity that brings you unfocused attention. Just be careful that your form of idleness doesn’t turn into another passion. Hobbies tend to outstrip their service to you as a form of play when you become intensely focused on that activity. Fun falls away and pressure mounts through too much intense focus. People who turn their hobbies into businesses without passionate perfectionism should be our heroes.