Find Your Passion

Ahhhhhhh…..Friday night.  I remember when Friday night use to mean, “what are we doing? where are we going?  Today it means; how fast can I get home?, do I have food in my fridge?, so I don’t have to stop at the grocery store, and don’t forget to take off my alarm for 5:30 am so if I am lucky I can sleep till 7.

I am not sure for me it is just about getting older.  For one I have a fuller life today than I have ever had.  Or maybe I should re-phrase that.  My life has always been full but it is a different full today.  For twenty years my life revolved around six kids, two marriages, volunteer activities, and owning my own business.  And before you think twice that I put them in chronological importance, trust me, it varied depended on the circumstance. 

Today the kids are grown and I have added 6 grandchildren into the mix (one with a heartbreaking medical condition).  I got rid of the two marriages, or they got rid of me (again a bit of perspective for another blog perhaps), I traded the business for three degrees and a professional designation, and volunteer activities….well let’s just say I can’t shake them. J

I get people that shake their head at me but I don’t understand.  Doesn’t everybody to this? 

I think if you could use one word to describe me, it’s “passionate”.  I can’t help it.  It is in me at the inner core.  It is what makes me tick. It has been with me since I won the election for student council president against the girl who everyone thought would win (I was new to the school and I won it hands down because

 

I MADE people believe THEY were important – cause I believed it!).   I want to shout from mountain tops, and at the very least I want you to join me in the climb. Even if we don’t make it to the top.  Because I am not…and have never been…about the end goal.  I have ALWAYS been about the journey.

Life to me is a journey.  I have been so fortunate to have the experiences that I have had.  The good, the bad, and the downright ugly.  In fact it the “ugly” is what has provided me with the most growth. 

A few years ago I reached one of the “ugly” moments.  While I was trying to claw myself back I remember me saying these words.  “I just want to be happy…nothing up and nothing down…just flat”.  I look back on those words and “snort”.  Who the heck (double hockey sticks) was I kidding.  I can no more do that than the pope can’t believe at his core he is catholic.  It is ingrained. 

So why am I writing these words?  Cause tonight I came home and I questioned them.  Since I learned the words “paradigm shift” somewhere in my third year of university at the age of 40, I vowed I would always be open to change.  Today I wondered if I was on the right path.  My day started out great and I facilitated a work shop on “Learning Goals”, “Valuing our Training”, “Making a Difference”.  I was pumped. I then spent my afternoon making sure my “real job” didn’t suffer.  And then this afternoon I was told in body and passive aggressive conversation that my “passion for the journey” doesn’t matter, and I would better appreciated if I just “did the job”. And I took those words “paradigm shift” and swirled them in my head and wondered if I was doing something wrong.

But then I turned on the news.  A 17 year old girl was receiving this award because she exhibited these traits.

1. Her principal said “she will be someone that does this the rest of her life….she will build and she will love”.

2. She said, “my grandfather told me to life each day to its fullest

And I smiled.  I had my paradigm confirmed, not shifted.  The greatest gift we can each be… is to find our passion…do it with everything that we have…and know that at the end of our life we can honestly look back and say….thanks for the great ride!

 

To our great ride peeps!