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My confession: I have no passion.
I have been thinking about this word for a while, “passion“. I am often envious when I hear people say that they are really passionate about something; for example, writing or singing or cooking or whatever it may be. I have also used the word passionate many times, and whenever I do that, I sort of feel like a fraud. Am I lying to others and worse, lying to myself?
Let me elaborate a bit more on this. For example, I care about the issue with lack of women in technology and I’d like to do my part to raise awareness and help out where I can. But does it make it enough to claim that I am passionate about gender diversity in technology? It feels even worse when people use the word “passionate” to describe me. “Isabel is so passionate about career development.” “Isabel shows her passion in her writings.”
The more I think about passion, the more I realise that it is subjective. Unlike your BMI, there is no standard formula to tell you whether you are truly passionate about something or not. I also realise why I feel a bit uncomfortable whenever I use the word passion or the adjective passionate to describe something I do enjoy doing.
You see, many people tend to say they are passionate about one particular thing, and one thing only. For example, Mary might say she is passionate about writing and all she wants to do every single day is to…
