My dad never worked a day in his life after he began what was to be his chosen profession. It sure seemed like work to me though. For me, sanding and painting cars, body work and panel swaps felt like work. The dust, fumes and occasional expletives when things weren’t going right had all the earmarks of my definition for work. But not to him.
He was a man who was having fun. And each new job was an eager challenge to be met with fervor and a positive attitude. It just made no sense to me that this man loved getting up early to open his shop and then wore a smile at work every day to boot. But he knew something I had not yet learned. It is something that only those who experience it can define…passion…to do every day what brings us fulfillment and pride.
It’s a strange phenomenon which burns, thirsts and drives as though it is alive. For those spotlighted in this edition and many others around the globe, passion is their professions. They chased it and it allowed them to catch it. The same is true for all of us when we find what is worth going after and then do it.
Passion is art in human form; the creation of something inside us that somehow welds us perfectly to what we care about. It’s a chase that each of us should embark upon and become ours for the catching and relish in the reward of the passion which is then ours for the taking. Because that which is designed for us to find fulfillment through our endeavors is, after all, the noblest of pursuits in our pursuit to define passion in ourselves.