Passion

Ongoing blog work assigned by Andrew Thornton this week was a word.  Passion.

(I think that my nature rebels against assignments since I left school.  Bla.)

I started mulling thos one over in my brain a couple of days ago and started jotting down notes that I have quite simply lost.  I looked up the definition of passion just to make sure I was on the right page since I don't feel good about only looking at passion as love; passion has an ugly side to it also.  Boiled down to its essence it means "a strong emotion".   My interpretation of the assignment was to evaluate the different ways that passion manifests itself.

Thinking that it would be hard to take photos that for this "essay", I will have to rely on images captured in words alone.  In my mind I take the following "pictures".

Anger is a strong, ugly emotion as are hate and fear.  All of these "virtual photos" could stem from any or all of these emotions.
...people arguing...Egyptians demonstrating...Suniis vs. Shi'ites...terrorists.

Compulsion can disguise itself as passion.  I can show you a part of  my bead collection or I can overwhelm you with the entire collection.  Without knowing me well, it looks as though I have a passion for beads.  However, that passion can quickly roll right over the edge into compulsively collecting.  (Now that I use my camera, perhaps I can "collect" pictures of beads that I don't actually buy!)

Taking that one step further.  When we call our hobbies passions, is that really the correct usage?  If I think about the things that I enjoy doing:  gardening, knitting, cooking, etc., do I really feel that those activities provoke strong emotions?  Hmm.  I think not.  I feel a sense of pleasure and enjoyment.  A satisfaction of my palate or sense of order or beauty, but not strong emotion.  Passion implies the high highs and the low lows, not the simple homespun quality of my everyday life and activities. 

I think that I'll need to think more about this word as it evokes strong feeling in me to make sure that I use the word correctly.