I've been wanting to write something about this for a while, but instead I've trapped people in conversation hoping they hold the same views as me, or trying to get them to understand what I'm saying, I don't even really know. But lately I've been struggling (?) with the notion of sin, more importantly Hell, and who goes and what not. DISCLAIMER: I'm Catholic, you all know this, you can't change my stubborn view, don't try. On top of coming to a 25 year journey of a conclusion, I'm staying this religion. Plus I'm a Taurus so just....don't even try.
Anyway, I've been thinking about the traditional views on whats right / wrong in the Church, connecting it with what's right / wrong in terms of just being healthy for us in general, trying to figure out why one thing is a greater sin or the other, and I mean...this is totally going in a direction I didn't want to go in, but shit, that's what stream of conscious writing is, right? I don't want to talk about what's wrong and right, I know what I know / have been taught, BUT one thing I think has modernized itself as one of the greatest sins (and not necessarily in a religious sense of sin) is denial of your passion.
And I don't mean passion as in sex or food or being passionate about partying, I mean our intrinsic passion. We were all born with different minds, different souls, different likes, distastes, and passions. Having a talent is one of the greatest treats of life, but being too scared, too self conscious, or too unaware of it really is detrimental to our time here on Earth. I've spent a better part of my years too scared to do anything. And that did nothing but lead to regret. I regret not tapping into my mind in high school and being overly preoccupied with being social or too caught up in the drama going on in my family. I spent too many years self-loathing, being depressed, lying on my bed blasting music and not wanting to talk to anyone, undergoing therapy sessions of fixing depression, and worried what other people thought of me. It wasn't until I was STUCK in the middle of fucking nowhere in Georgia in college that I fell in love with Dante Alighieri, and a bunch of other authors and books I was forced to read. It was then I started my blog because I realized I LOVED writing, and since I was always so passionate about music and that super annoying girl in HS who was always like "HAVE YOU HEARD THE NEW PORTISHEAD" and begged other kids in college to let me play my music at their parties, I figured maybe (actually my mom suggested) I should start a blog about music. And just write about it. Even if no one reads it, write about it. Nobody was listening to me when I would hound them with music, nobody cared, so I wrote to the internet when I was 19. #bloglife. It wasn't until my school shut down and I was transferred to a really hard University in Naples, FL (and busted my ass like I didn't know what possible) that I found out I was actually moderately decent at writing. My professors told me my strong point was honesty, and that I'd make a killing at journalism, because I have to know every detail of every story I hear. So, I had a good ear for tunes, had a knack for writing, loved them both my whole life before I ever even knew I loved it, and made a life. I was lucky enough to grow up in New York so I took full advantage of moving back with the understanding of the city that a lot of people don't have.
I don't get paid well. I still nanny on the side. But I took a passion and I made it fruitful. The other night I had one of the highlights of my career, and there was a moment I looked around and I was just like "how the hell did I get here, how is this even happening right now?" And I realized I was living my dream. SHITTY effing things have happened, are still happening, I'm broker than hell, but for that ONE night, everything that I have been working for was right there, and it's a really cool feeling to know that I did it all by myself.
The point of this post was not to talk about my life, but to try to make a point that we should all take times of silence to figure out what it really is we're passionate about. Whether it be a writer, in finance, a nanny, a mother, a wife, a coffee lover, a failing guitar player, find it. Find that passion and go with it, even if you can't make a living off of it, at least you spent your ONLY time we have on this Earth trying it all out.
I also think about if something really sudden happened and my life ended. What would be said about me? Would people remember me in a good light? Would I be pissed because I never went after what I was too scared to go after? Was I nice while doing it? Did people want to be around me? I don't know if we get to keep doing what we love after we die, so this is it.
This life is the ONLY life we have, we need to make the best of it. If we all used the passion we were born with, imagine what we could do.
