Good evening ladies and gentleman.

Recently i have found myself wandering about the feeling of passion. Its one of the few beautifully pure things left in our modern lifestyles but what do we do to promote this feeling of wander? I got to thinking about materialism, love, sex, food, wine, travel, cars- everything. How to someone, somewhere, these object is a part of a lifestyle that at its heart is a feeling of pure, unadulterated joy.

These moments are important because the development of these passions is a fundamental step to figuring out who you are.

Yet, knowing how important these moments are, i sit in those lower moments questioning the very notion of something so supposedly frivolous like building a car, or just owning something i like or getting to go somewhere I’ve always wanted to go. I feel guilty for wanting to do something so “meaningless” for we as a nation have become obsessed with persistent and profoundly large steps in this need to progress.

Yet doing something just because i enjoy it, or because it makes me feel good, often seems like I’m wasting my time.

What if that comes back to the need to progress, to advance to the upper levels, to constantly and continuously moving in bigger and bigger jumps every time. It feels to me that society is trying to force us all to be born in their image, to like what the world tells us to like, to enjoy something we are told to enjoy. That way we can be kept under control and given just enough freedom to remain under the illusion we are free.

Is it really that black and white though? For freedom, is a state of mind. We see people on tv shows and inspirational people across the vast sphere of the internet making changes in their life and that positive effect is rippling around to millions of people across the world- one of them being you. Naturally you start to think- “maybe i could change the world too,” and for a moment- you feel inspired.

Then as time passes, even minutes after the initial inspiration you start to feel different, more worn down, for whatever you felt, has passed. Without realising, you carry on the same as before, sure that whatever far flung idea you had “would have never worked anyway.”

I have been there many times and i am only able to offer this alternative. What if you, what if i, what if nobody in fact was ever going to change the world? What if me, you and so many others have been living under the illusion this was even possible? More than that- what if we weren’t even supposed to?

What if, individually, we were to work to charge OUR world. I would work my world in my way, you would work yours in your way and as a collective, through genuine innovation and often in the smallest of steps, we would change the world, by simply working to bring about evolution in your world, thus facilitating a revolution.

So whatever your passions are, why not pursue them? It doesn’t matter how the world perceives what you enjoy, or what you love. If you wake up everyday looking to spend your time writing poetry or painting a beautiful masterpiece in the morning as you wander down to your garage to work on your project car in the afternoon- then why not?

It doesn’t matter what your artwork is and it certainly doesn’t matter what value it can add to the world- for it is yours and yours alone. It’s something deeply personal, the working on things that instils a fire in your soul, the personal touch on existing that makes your heart beat just a little bit faster and makes you want to reach just a little bit further. This is where we find passion. Its sensations and feelings of this nature that are the components of true happiness.

Nobody and nothing should be able to take that away from you.

No amount of guilt is going to change this, for it’s the difference between existing and truly living. The world will always think something, it may evolve but the fundamentals stay the same and not everyone is going to agree. You will disagree with some and others will disagree with you, it’s nothing to shy away from and certainly nothing to feel guilty about.

For apart, we will simply be left asking that age old question- “What if I had done things differently?” “what if i had pursued that? what if i had just listened to myself rather than what the world told me to do, then maybe I would have been happy”

But together, understanding and accepting that while our differences may divide us, the way they make us feel will always bring us together.

Puts me in mind of a verse from an old Frank Turner song….

“We’re not trying to shape the world
So people think like us
We just want our own space to dance man
No favours, no fuss”

Passions guilt is a just another obstacle to overcome, for then innovation and happiness will be a force for good in all of our lives.

Yours, with love as always

DR x