What is Your Passion

“What is your passion?” Someone asked me a week ago. I couldn’t believe myself fumbling for words. I didn’t know the answer to the most basic and simplest of all questions. It was like one of those moments where you wake up in the morning, look at yourself in the mirror and notice your freckles the first time. “Damn!” That four letter word pops up in your head. I felt the same way. I realized that perhaps I had been using quite a bit of my brain all my life and in the process of sharpening my intellect, I had turned a complete deaf ear to that feeble and whimpering voice of my heart. Well, lets say that I had been pretty much successful in keeping a check on my surging emotions and trampling them whenever needed. I almost believed that the concept of 'follow your heart' was made for losers. "Shame on you!" Ok that's what I can hear some of you mumbling right now. It's alright....I can take it. I admit I was wrong but don't blame me...that's the way I was raised.

I’m not sure how many of us do get an opportunity to do what we really love to. Most of us get trapped in the vicious circle of paying our bills, putting food on the table and saving for the future. It’s sad to see how lives get wasted in the process of keeping up with the needs and standards of this materialistic world. There are millions of people out there somewhere, struggling to make both ends meet, to carve a better future for their kids or coping with the exorbitant medical bills of their ailing family members. How dissatisfied, disgruntled and disillusioned lives most of us live! The worst part is that we don’t even realize the abuse we inflict on our body and mind, until one day, we end up, in the painful silence of some intensive care unit. Laying there hooked up to those horrendous respirators, we get ample time reflecting on the years we might have spent killing our desires either to keep our jobs or making sacrifices for our loved ones. Some of us might even quietly shed tears for not having done things which were supposed to be done or for those things which could’ve been done differently for creating a better life.

It surely is horrifying for anyone to see one’s own precious life being frittered away before experiencing the real happiness which a soul is duly entitled to. No one would want to leave this world with a bag of regrets on one’s shoulders. We all know that a soul chooses to incarnate on this planet for fulfilling some unfinished work or to satisfy unfulfilled desires but most importantly, to know its connection with the Creator and to get aligned with His energy. Ironically, soon after being born, a human being so brilliantly integrates himself with the matrix that he completely forgets the purpose of his life….the purpose of his coming back to this earth. Well, most of the times it’s solely due to our circumstances and a few times due to our own complacence that we go off track and forget our life-purpose. For instance, in my case, if I would’ve told my parents that I wanted to be an artist, a writer, a painter or for that matter a spiritualist instead of a doctor, engineer or a lawyer, they would’ve surely disowned or abandoned me …probably driven me crazy enough to take my own life. Sounds extreme? Believe it or not, that was the kind of family system I was born in. I chose to give in to their wishes back then ….and now ….after living forty years on this planet already, I don’t know who I am or what I like anymore. After ages, a sudden snap of one simple question (what is your passion?) catapulted me back to my source and had me thinking who I really was and what I turned myself into.

It’s very important to have a dream in the first place but more important is to make that dream a reality. Pursuing a dream might not fetch you enough money but it does guarantee inner happiness, contentment and peace. Doing what you’re cut out for, brings the best out of you and makes you feel well grounded and stable headed. Each one of us is unique in our own special way. We all have our own set of strengths and weaknesses. All we have to do is to dig into our hidden potential and bring it out for the world to see. It’s just possible that your passion, apart from giving a booster to your inner growth, might serve the greater good. I wonder sometimes what could’ve been the fate of people like Steven Spielberg, Sachin Tendulkar, Mother Teresa, Edgar Cayce, J.K. Rowling, Picasso, M.F. Hussain, Michaelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and for that matter scientists like Einstein and Steven Hawkins, if they had not chosen to ‘follow their heart’. They gave this world so much to cherish, remember and be grateful for. All these great people I mentioned have one thing in common…..they followed their heart and did what they were best at. Just like the head, heart too has its own instincts which exist in the purest form; unlike those of the head, the instincts of the heart are more subtle and subdued but they make an individual downright modest, loving, creative and above all non-judgmental. People who follow the instincts of heart may achieve success after a great difficulty but when they finally do, they feel like having ‘lived it up’. Don’t you agree?