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My New Year’s Resolution
One of my New Years resolutions this year was to live life more passionately. It was actually my resolution last year as well. I started to think about passion and what it meant to be passionate a few years back. I believe I started to think about it because I felt as if my life at that moment had no passion. I felt numb. Everyday seemed so mundane. This made me feel very empty inside. I guess I was going through some spiritual crisis or something. This empty feeling wasn’t always present in my life. It seemed to be growing day by day. During this time I over came a lot of challenges. I had accomplished many of my personal goals which gave me validation. It felt extremely good to set a goal then go out and make it happen. These things were important to me but it seemed as if there was no passion behind them.
I couldn’t understand why I felt this way. It made no sense. How could I have no passion for something I work so hard to accomplish? Ultimately this empty feeling led me to find out what I truly had passion for. I wanted a life of fulfillment. I was tired of being a robot who is automated to do things with no feeling or thought as to why I do them. I wanted passion in my life and I was going to re discover how to achieve this.
Define Passion
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When I Google searched the word passion. Many images came up. Mostly images of Jesus from the movie “Passion of the Christ”, but also of flowers, music, the color red, and people making love. If you search for the word passion in Dictionary.com’s web site you will find this:
Dictionary.com's definition of passion.
To me being passionate was the very essence of what it means to have a fulfilling life. I wanted to feel alive! I wanted be free! Free from this mundane passionless prison. During this time I realized the thing that I was most passionate about was missing in my life. The thing that was missing was my art. There was a time in my life when I would draw every single day. I knew I was truly passionate about drawing and art because I would do it on my own all the time with no compensation. No one told me to do it. It came straight from the gut. The very depths of my soul. So naturally my first thought was to break away from my new habit which was only to create art for money. I thought that this habit was the root cause of my passionless life style. I had to do something to break away from this.
So on my days off I would sit down and draw. Unfortunately doing this was not enough. For some reason it just didn’t feel right. It seemed as if I couldn’t just draw on command. The strangest feeling like as if I was forcing myself to be passionate. This lead me to search outside myself. I had a thought, I needed to be inspired to draw. I need to be in an environment that encourages creativity. I thought about a place where I felt this the most. This place was a school in Dominican Republic that I attended for a summer intensive class years ago. I had many great memories but what stand out the most is that I had complete focus on my art and creativity. I knew that those days were far behind me and I couldn’t go back but maybe I could recreate that here at home some how.
I started to look at my environment and the people around me. I would observe everything outside of me to see if I could find any glimpse of inspiration. I was in search of inspiration and motivation. At the time I was doing well financially and had a lot of time off during the week. So on my days off from work I would go out to museums, art shows, and parks. I would read books, watch inspiring TV programs, and search the web endlessly. It felt really good to do these things. I started to see what I was missing in my life and I wanted to make a change.
I read a book by Deepak Chopra called “The seven spiritual laws of success”. This book had many words of wisdom. It prompted me to buy other books of his. Many of his writings speak of passion. One of the many things that stand out was the fact that people never ask others what their passions are. This intrigued me. I felt it true in my own my life. No one in my life had ever asked me what I was passionate about. In turn I myself had never asked anyone the same question. So I started to incorporate this question into my life. I wanted to make it appoint to ask people about their passions.
Here is an inspiring video I found on youtube recently which I feel really connected with what I was experiencing at the moment.
My passion is people
My passion is connecting with people and helping others. I realized this through volunteering. Last year I volunteered for an Organization by the name of Free Arts NYC. We help create art work with displaced children of various ages. We worked on three separate art projects, ate pizza, and enjoyed a musical performance. It was the most fun I ever had with a bunch of strangers! It brought tears to my eyes. It really made me see that deep down inside we all want the same thing. We all want to be happy. Sharing that experience with the kids and the other volunteers brought that to us for a moment.
Volunteering
I have volunteering for many different organizations through out the years. Every time I do I get this happy feeling inside. I feel like I really want to be here and the people who I surrounded by are so enthusiastic! I would like to continue to dedicate my time to helping others in any way I can. Life is more than just making money and buying nice things. It’s about human experience and spiritual connections. Which brings me to my next New Years resolution which is to donate money to a non for profit organization for Christmas. This year I chose One Laptop Per Child. Below is a short video commercial of the Organization and their mission.
One Laptop per Child Video
If you are interested in learning more about One Laptop Per Child please visit their site.
Below is a copy of my goal of “living life more passionately” which I had written down in my journal in 2010.
Live life more passionately
- Don’t isolate or withdraw yourself.
- Think of who you are and who you would like to become.
- Try to focus less on who you aren’t.
- Become approachable.
