A tricky sort of emotion. It brings glory and ruin without discrimination. The word, passio, meant suffering in its original Latin form.
Passion still means suffering in the Christian liturgy: The Passion of the Christ. Suffering remains implicit in any sort of passion. What takes you up can also pull you down.
Passion is contemptuous of reason. Reason is leery of passion. There is something worth considering in both positions. Life without passion would be dull. Life without reason would be dangerous. Maintaining proper balance is as wise as it is difficult.
The condition of Musth in bull elephants is witness to the hazard of passion without restraint.
Bull elephants periodically suffer a temporary surge of testosterone that can be as much as 60% more than normal. It drives them crazy. They charge around burning with rage and lust.
What can’t be mated, they destroy. Eventually they calm-down. Those who are slow to calm-down risk getting killed by sane bull elephants, or shot by angry agronomists.
Teen-age boys pumped overfull of testosterone can empathize with the elephant’s predicament. Are their own intense emotions: true love, lust, and rage - or just excessive hormonal prompting? It’s easy to get mixed-up, and hard to repair.
Optimists might say, “Oh, c’mon, passion for, art, music, and freedom, is surely an unqualified good”?
I can think of some qualified exceptions.
Vincent van Gogh’s passion for art ended in madness, or maybe it was the other way around. The world was enriched, van Gogh suffered. The suffering artist is a cliché of modern times. Madness and passion are often confused.
The great composer, Friedrich Wilhelm Wagner is known for the transcendent passion of his work. Less well known is the fact that he did a few stints in the madhouse.
His madness was blamed on morphine addition. Was he mad, morphine addicted, or only impassioned?
How can you know which - for certain?
The French Revolution began with a passion for social justice. It ended with the Reign of Terror and the deaths of 17,000 equal, but unequally killed, citizens. Many of the slaughtered were leaders of the original revolution.
Their revolution started with reasoned arguments about “The Rights of Man”. Then passion overwhelmed reason.
The American Revolutionaries were passionate about the rights of individuals.
Unlike the French, they didn’t lose their heads over their passion. They reasoned correctly that abstractions like the “Rights of Man” are open to malign interpretation. “Individual Rights” has only one interpretation. Misuse is still possible, but less likely.
Like all forms of energy, passion works best under restraint. “What, restrain passion! No, no, no, where’s the fun in that”?
The fun in restraining passion is in flying without necessarily crashing.
Good pilots soar to the heights and yet land safely. They have harnessed their passion to controllable enthusiasm; all the fun with less mess and crazy consequences.
Of course, enthusiasm isn’t as emotionally satisfying as passion. It lacks passion’s exciting romantic overtones.
I had a friend diagnosed with bi-polar disorder. He had no problems when he took the prescribed medication, but the medication also left him listless.
He missed the excitement of the highs and dismissed memory of the lows. Sometimes he wouldn’t take the medication just to regain the thrills. One day he skipped the medication for too long.
He was divorced. He lived alone. His body lay undiscovered for two, maybe three weeks. His ex-wife came from out-of-town to clean-up the house and settle his estate. I knew my friend to be an unusually neat and tidy person.
His ex-wife told me the inside of his typically tidy house was filled with one-hundred-twelve empty wine bottles, ashtrays overflowing onto the floors, a refrigerator stinking with curdled milk, fast-food leftovers, and assorted items too far gone to identify,
Surely I’m not equating the highs of bi-polar disorder to passion? Yes I am. My friend knew the risk in not taking his medication. He consciously took that risk because he longed for the engaged purpose he remembered from the high points of his disorder.
Something in the human soul is excited by purpose. Purpose makes us feel fully alive. When we are passionate about something we feel a fulfillment of purpose as exciting as that felt by the hound in hot in pursuit of the hare. Without passion we might never chase anything.
Passionate pursuit is never without risk.
Chaos isn’t married to Passion. They are good friends.
On the other hand, when passion is controlled it
has driven amazing wonders of human achievement. Enthusiasm is the proper term for controlled passion. Enthusiasm is better than passion. The difference between passion and enthusiasm is more than sematic.
Our culture romanticizes passion: Passion is wild. Passion is unbound. Passion dares all. Passion suffers heroically. If Passion ends in smoldering ash - so what -
the glory is worth the risk.
Sober enthusiasm gets more done, with less suffering.
I prefer getting more done with less suffering.