Passion

No judgements here, but really?  I am sure the heroine has amethyst or jade color eyes. 

How passionate are you? I am not talking the bodice ripping, pulsating harlequin romance type of passion but the type of passion as defined by oxforddictionaries.com, "an intense desire or enthusiasm for something, a thing arousing a great enthusiasm". 

I attended a lecture the other week where the speaker was quite passionate in his subject about a very obscure historical object that was used in determining the Mason Dixon line.  I knew of the line and have crossed it many times but because of his enthusiasm I am more appreciative of it, how it came about and in the men who surveyed it.   I now see the maps and historical letters and documents with appreciative eyes. 

I am sure that you have probably had a similar instance if you ever had a passionate school teacher on a subject. My high school English teacher was passionate about Shakespeare and so I love the Bard's plays. Alas, much to my Physics major husband, my high school Physics professor's passion didn't rub off on me. 

But that speaker did get me thinking:  About what am I passionate?  What stirs my soul?  What arouses an enthusiasm in me?   Do I inspire an enthusiasm in others? 

I am always so impressed with people who are laser focused on a subject and seem to know an inexhaustible amount of information on that subject.  They are the subject experts.  They know what they know.  They stand for something. Their knowledge base becomes their identity.

The more I live, the more I know that I don't know.  As my grandmother predicted many years ago, "jack of all trades, master of none."   In some ways I find that upsetting, because it seems that mastering something becomes who one is.  So, more than not knowing a subject thoroughly, I am wondering about my identity.  For what do I stand?  And, if I stand for it, do I know that subject or viewpoint or theory as an expert?  Should I?

What about you?  Have you ever wondered about your knowledge base?  What do you know?  About what are you passionate?  Is/should that be one and the same? What is your identity?  Are you an expert on that? Does that knowledge inspire others?  Does your enthusiasm rub off? 

What's your passion?