I was browsing through a friend’s Facebook timeline the other day, and came across her New Year’s message.
OK, so here we are in August and I’m looking at January, so I really was browsing. The point is, what she said really stood out to me – live with full passion is what she wrote.
And I get that. Do what you do with feeling. Imbue your activities with drive and verve. This is, of course, sage advice. Far too often we sleep walk through life, failing to grasp the magnificence that lays itself out before us at ever step. So I get her point.
But I also think it’s a little more complicated than that. Passion, as the great Pablo Neruda said, is “as if you were on fire from within.” And how could anyone argue against the merits of that? But it seems that perhaps passion unleashed without the tether of a good purpose can demolish rather than build. And it is here we need to explore more deeply. For a true human being must understand how to do what’s really important. And that takes massive self-knowledge.
So let’s go beyond sex and passion today, on Thinking with Somebody Else’s Head.