The passion for passion

We are the most passionate generation ever. People are constantly declaring their passions for pretty well everything under the sun. The first five pages of a Google search for the phrase "is my passion" found the following listed as passions:

• collecting
  
• football
  
• architecture
  
• photography
  
• quilting
  
• running
  
• hockey
  
• wireless technology, and...
  
• taxidermy!

Come to think of it I might not mind joining that quilting group. Sorry. If you're going to take these statements seriously, you really have to have no sense of humour. Like the fellow who describes himself as a "passionate internet guru". Never go alone to consultations with him, eh?

When I think of passion, I think of an intense desire. Someone with an intense desire for wireless tachnology is just sick. You may object, of course, that passion can be used to mean enthusiasm. But why not describe it as enthusiasm, then? That's the more accurate word.

The answer is that when you describe something as a passion you make it sound much more important than a mere enthusiasm, even if an enthusiasm is all it is. And these days enthusiasm is pretty well all it ever is. The days of intense feeling are over. People with real passions – your more ardent Muslims, say – scare the living daylights out of us.

Wentworth Sutton pointed out in an article at our old site that this generation has had to adapt to a life of excruciating boredom:

Why are we so keen on being bored? For the obvious reason that life has become so boring that we have to work on our ability to tolerate it. The conservative values of security and husbanding one's wealth which have been so skilfully promoted over the last twenty years or so discourage people from doing anything interesting. Go on a trip? No, better to put the money into a retirement account. Better to put it into a rental property. Better to put it into mutual funds (oh, sorry – that advice is under review).

Declaring your enthusiasm for quilting to be a passion makes it seem as if you're leading an exciting and rewarding life, rather than haunting craft shops a little more frequently than is good for you.

If you're a stockbroker who devotes every spare moment you can get — once you've fulfilled your duties to family, friends, and employer — to painting, then you have a hobby. If you're a stockbroker who loves painting so much that you abandon your wife and children and eventually move to Tahiti because you think you can develop a more authentic style of painting there, then you have a passion. People will still remember your name over a century after you die, too.

On passion © 2008, John FitzGerald