I was driving back this week from a meeting in Rotterdam and as I like to do listen to Podcast when I am for a longer time in the car that is what I did. Most of you know that I am a big fan of Oprah Winfrey ( I am secretly hoping I can get such an inspiring person and good interviewer as I believe she is) That night I was listening to a Super Soul episode from 2019 with the journalist and author Elizabeth Gilbert. What Elizabeth was saying was so spot on! It also sounded very familiar, definitely worth listening.
Elizabeth spoke about the fact that she was used to travel the world with a keynote about passion. Telling people that you need to be courageous enough to follow your true calling, what she calls your passion. She is the kind of person, (a specialist I believe) that has always wanted to become a writer, she was so passionate about writing from a very young age and still is at this day. Since she found out very young that the people who write books are called writers that is what she wanted to become, she was so very passionate about it that she persisted in her writing, even if she got many no-s before she finally was able to publish a book. And she became a very successful writer. What is very special is that she is after so many years still so very passionate about her profession. It is amazing that kind of passion, as if you get born with it and you will die with the same passion.
After one of these keynotes when she sat down in her hotel room waiting for some room service to arrive, she was scrolling through her Facebook wall and found an article of a lady that was in the audience that night. What she was reading was not the usual enthusiastic reaction Elizabeth was used to get, on the contrary.
What that women wrote opened Elizabeth eyes and changed her talks about passion forever. The lady wrote about her feelings when she left after the show. She felt very, very bad,…
The reason of het sadness was that she never felt as if she was so passionate about something and felt as if she would never become a happy person. She was feeling unhappy, angry and a bit jealous, as she was so desperately looking for her 1 and only true passion, for years and years. Hearing people talking about their passion over and over again made things worse.
Elizabeth felt terrible, reflected on that and realized that her best friend and even her husband were the same kind of people as this lady. Not people as she was, passionate about one thing, but they were very curious people, that did many things in their lives. They were in a way following the path that curiosity leads them on. Being passionate about one thing and then afterwards about another.
I had that AHA moment in my car, maybe you might have the same feeling.
It is not that people do not describe me as passionate, I can be very passionate, but I have been passionate about different things, one after the other, and even passionate about things at the same time. As a hobby, as a challenge, as a job, as a team, …
Recently I understood myself that in the world we have 2 types of people that Elizabeth talks about in the podcast, and I also accept that it is ok not to stay passionate about something forever.
I was once passionate about dancing, acting, presenting, reading, writing, running, mountain biking, cooking, and so many things, sometimes the passion becomes less and sometimes after many years it comes back, some passions might even disappear
I also wonder(still at my age) what I will become when I grew up….
But I feel happy on my curiosity path that might go funny places.
I am becoming just more me, day after day, in a passionate and positive way.
I love the worth “becoming”…and I have plans with becoming actually.
