Feelings

Deep Holes

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, social esteem

Ya’ gotta look out for deep holes when you’re walking in unfamiliar territory. Deb and I do a fair bit of hiking, and in fact, she does twice as much as I do, often in our preferred Wisconsin state park, Devil’s Lake, but anywhere we are, whether in the U.S. or Europe. Since we are often in unfamiliar territory, we have learned to be careful where we walk. If we are on some kind of unfamiliar precipice, we need to use great care because one false step could be life-threatening. On the other hand, hikes to both familiar territory are always enjoyable and hikes to unfamiliar territory are always exciting. Sometimes, these deep holes are of one’s own making. Literally, we have often made the mistake of doing some kind of yard project and stumbled over the block, the wood, or the tool as well as having tripped into the hole we dug for the post we were putting in on the fence line. Sometimes Deb has dug a hole that I didn’t know about and then I stumbled on it. So deep holes can come by someone’s own making or someone else’s making. Additionally, sometimes you have to watch out for massive holes that seem to come out of nowhere.

Holes of your own making

These are things that you have created on your own that now suck energy out of you or otherwise impede your progress in life. They may be major holes, like a marriage that you shouldn’t have entered, a profession that you shouldn’t have entered, or a house that you shouldn’t have bought. Almost always, you know at the time that you shouldn’t have done these things but for some surface reason you went against your better judgment, intuition, or deep feeling. You married the woman because you loved her despite the fact that you knew she had a lot of psychological baggage; you went into the profession because you were good at math and could make a lot of money in accounting even though you hated the tediousness of such work; you bought the house because it was a good deal even though it was way too big for you. These are holes that you have created for yourself. You have tried to justify your errors by citing the love, the money, or the beauty, but because these big holes continue to bother you, you continue to be in this hole. Furthermore, you are inclined to complain about your wife, your job, or your house to anyone who will listen, always to no avail. You created the hole; you have to get out of it. By the way, this doesn’t mean that you should get a divorce, quit your job, and sell your house. It does mean that you need to admit that you are in a hole, and you created it. Then you can…see later.

There are other holes of less significance, or shorter duration, and of only moderate distress, but they are self-made holes nevertheless. You make too much food for dinner just before you go on a two-week vacation, and you can’t use the leftovers like you usually do; you bought the wrong size shoes and you can’t easily get back to Chicago where you bought them, or you agreed to take on that Sunday school class for preteens that has become a burden. These short-term errors are holes, but not deep ones.

There are self-made holes that lie somewhat between holes of marriage, job, and house on the one hand and buying the wrong pair of shoes on the other. These holes are often related to the avoidances-come-addictions that most people have. A hole for many people is the undue use of alcohol, which then causes other holes like money spent, or days in jail. There are, in fact, more behavioral addictions than those of chemicals, namely gambling, hoarding, and working. In addition to addictive substance and behavior, the most common self-created hole are physical illnesses. Overweight people use 50% of the medical dollar spent in America (and probably elsewhere), but continue to overeat and under-exercise with the result of their talking about their various body ailments as if someone else created them.

You can actually deal with these self-made holes if you admit that you made them. Sadly, most people don’t admit to their part in the hole-making. The holes that are more difficult to deal with than the self-made holes are the ones that other people or situations have created for you. Almost all self-created holes have been created to compensate for the larger hole that was created by your family of origin. But before we get to that part of the discussion, let’s discuss holes that are “just there” coming out of nowhere.

Holes that are created from nonhuman external circumstances

The most obvious hole is the current lockdown due to the coronavirus. This is a large hole. It is frustrating, scary sometimes, uncertain always, of unknown duration, and certainly not something that you created. It is clear to all of us that, for the most part, there isn’t much we can do but wait and try our best to be careful. But in this circumstance there is no absolute rule. Some people don’t care a whit about social distancing while others are wearing hazmat suits. You are probably somewhere in the middle. Note that however difficult the lockdown is, it is actually easier to deal with than the holes that you created in your life because you can talk about “it” that has control over you or “they” who have control over you. It’s much harder to face the holes that you created in your own life.

There are many less profound holes that nonpersonal external factors have caused for you. You get fired (or these days, “laid off”) from your work; your wife dies; you lose much of your life savings due to a market turn-down. Externally created holes can be less profound, like losing your cell phone on a trip west, find yourself facing an unexpected real estate tax bill, or some unknown person failed to clean up the dog poop in your yard. These are holes that you can step around, fall into (hopefully not the poop), and recover pretty quickly. Not necessarily so easy when people have put holes in your way.

Holes that are created from other people

These are holes that other people have put in your way, almost always without intention to do so, but rather just due to the way they acted in life. Some of these holes are profound, and some much less so. It is a delicate time for you because it is way too easy to “blame” other people for the hole you stepped in and then continue to blame them for the fact that you’re still in the hole. We’ll deal with these other-created holes, and all holes, in a moment. First, look at the profound holes.

Profound holes (big ones) come primarily from your parents. All parents do their best when they raise children, but their best is often not good enough. Very simply stated, parent-caused holes come from parents who neglected their children, indulged their children, judged their children as lacking in some way, or demanded too much of their children. As you look back at your childhood, you will see some element of at least one of these tendencies, possibly two. It is easiest to see the neglect (or abuse) of children, but the larger issue that I see these recent decades is indulgence, namely where children are not given responsibility to take care of themselves, property, and other people. Indulgence creates a huge hole in children, who then grow up to be big people with big holes in them. Such people think that the world will give them everything they want like their parent(s) did. Neglected children have a very different hole in them, which turns out to be a deep hunger for the safety, comfort and nurturance that they didn’t get as children. A subtler hole is created in children who have been criticized and judged for the way they went about life, or forced to abide by a set of rules and structures that was not consistent with how they truly were. A freedom-oriented child needs great freedom together with the consequences of using freedom to a fault. A deeply loving child needs the freedom to love all people and animals and slowly learn that loving such is not always good. They don’t need to be judged for loving freedom o4 people, nor do they need to be forced into other ways of life. While most of the big holes in people’s lives come from parents, it is occasionally true that some other person has created such a hole, like an abusive husband, a promiscuous wife, an intolerable boss, or a friend who abandons you. Usually, however, we meet, marry, befriend, or work for people who simply replicate the damage that was done to us as children. (Look up Freud’s “repetition compulsion” concept.)

Most people do not do well with any kind of hole, even the small ones, but when people have had holes created in their lives due to early life losses, they rarely recover. Instead, they find ways to avoid the holes with some kind of filler. Most often this filler is addictive in some way, but not just substance and behavior. Some people use their natural gifts to fill the hole but always without genuine success. They talk more or they talk less (if at all); they cry all the time or they fail to ever cry; they work 90 hours a week or they don’t work at all; they dream all the time with various theories of life or they just keep doing things to keep from feeling the hole inside. Unfortunately, this filler works for minutes, maybe hours, but not for long because the filler is not real: it is imaginary. They think that if they continue to work, play, dream, do something, eat something, drink, cry, or talk, they will fill the hole. A deep hole cannot be filled. It needs to evaporate. Sadly, they very often drag other people into the hole that is in them. They actually become psychologically dangerous, and occasionally physically dangerous. It is a task to truly befriend such a person and keep a safe distance at the same time.

Dealing effectively with people who have big holes in them

I want to be very delicate here so as to avoid offending people with holes that they have to deal with. We all have holes, some small, some large, and we usually find ways to deal with them, stepping around them, fixing them, or simply falling into them and getting out by hook or crook. On the other hand, many people have such large holes in them that they are often unable to muster up the courage or find the recipe for climbing out of the hole, that they become stuck in these holes or become psychologically dangerous to people around them. Most specifically, I want to avoid talking about what is “wrong” with such people, much less render some kind of diagnosis. Diagnoses could include depression, anxiety, bipolar disorder, or borderline personality disorder, but none of these diagnoses actually helps people suffering from having a deep hole inside. Sadly, it behooves people who are in their lives to protect themselves from being drawn into the hole. I can be drawn in by the person’s genuine complaints about some part of life, or all of life for that matter. I can feel sorry for the person, render some shoot-from-the-hip advice, or avoid the person altogether. In most cases, the last option is where people end up because they have become exhausted in trying to help their friend with words and actions. This leads to a kind of abandonment that only exacerbates the person with the hole because s/he feels bad about him/herself, and then looks for someone else to fill the hole. The important truth is that no one, and nothing, can fill the hole. So what can be done? We’ll get to it is a moment.

It is important to realize that that all people have holes and these very same people want someone else to fix the hole or fill it. You can do neither. In fact, if you have such a person in your life, you must do what your friend most does not want: limit. You have to say no to her/his requests for more information, more money, or more time. The more you limit, the less you will be frustrated by failing to help your friend with his/her hole. This, of course, will make your friend mad at you for hot “helping” him/her, but limiting your friend is the only thing you can do. Simply put, you give what you can, and no more. But people with holes always have “one more question” or one more request or need one more minute. From the people I have known with big holes in them I have heard the following: “I don’t want to go to the hospital where my wife is having brain surgery because it’s going to be all about him” (yes really); “If you gave me all the time you have, I would want more;” “All I want is all you have.” These are actual statements made by people, all good people, and all intelligent people, who have big holes in them. So you cannot fill their holes. Give, yes. Give in, no. Giving in is not giving. You know the difference because when you give in, you resent and you complain about your friend. Do neither. Just give, and then stop giving when you don’t want to give.

Dealing with the hole(s) in your life

Finally, I get practical. It is much easier to wax psychological. Effective dealing with the hole is getting the hole to evaporate. By this I mean that as you take responsibility for seeing yourself and seeing the world realistically, the hole that you have been living in begins to disappear. It is most certainly not filling the hole, whether with words, not with comfort, not with anger, and not with advice. You can deal with the small holes with some time, effort, and intelligence. It the larger, deeper inside of you, holes that require a good deal of work. This is the procedure:

  • Recognize that you have a big hole in your life. This is painful, but it is absolutely the necessary beginning, and it is the only beginning.
  • This will make you sad because you will see that you are missing something very central to life. You need to be sad for a period of time to allow you to move on.
  • Moving on is not forgetting the hole or neglecting it. Moving on is finding ways to improve your life. This usually means admitting that you have wanted someone else to fill the hole or fix the hole. Giving up this dream is painful, and you will see that no one, absolutely no one can, or should, fill or fix the hole.
  • Note the intrinsic fear that you have when you see that, whoever created this hole in you, it is now your hole and you have to deal with it. You need to reflect on what you missed in childhood, which will always be some combination of undue limitation, not enough limitation, neglect, indulgence, lack of understanding of your nature, some kind of true abuse, or a combination of these elements.
  • Finding, facing, and feeling the cause for your hole will begin to give you confidence that you can climb out of the hole. Again, there is no fixing or filling the hole. You have to climb out on your own.
  • You will not want to climb out. You would much rather have someone climb in or at least give you a latter. Won’t happen. Can’t happen. Just admit that you don’t want to climb out and you will soon find yourself climbing…hating it all the while.
  • As you climb, you will notice your confidence increases. This kind of confidence is not based on what you’re good at like playing, working, talking, dreaming, or crying. It will be something different. You are, as you climb out, developing other skills that have long eluded you. I can’t tell you what skill you will learn, but it most certainly won’t be what you’ve been doing for years, which is, figuratively, using a fork instead of a shovel or a ladder to get out of the hole. Forks are great for eating, not for climbing.
  • As you climb out, tell someone about your journey. Avoid the tendency that still resides in you, that someone else can rescue you. just tell your friend your struggle and ask your friend to keep quiet while you talk about your feelings and thoughts.
  • Note that you are feeling better and the hole is smaller. Eventually, it will evaporate

Helpless

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, mindfulness, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Helpless is a feeling. That having been said, it is a subset of “feelings” that I have written about (and that Deb and I have written a book about incorporating all of my feeling blogs). Describing helpless as a feeling is the best way I can define helpless, just as all words representing deep feelings are undefinable. While you can’t define such feelings, you can see the effects of these feelings, and the outgrowth of these feelings in some kind of expression. Expressions of feelings are always physical, emotional, cognitive, or active. I want to discuss the nature of this very important feeling, which means primarily the effects true helpless has on an individual or a group of people. I will also touch on other topics that relate to helplessness, which are genuine depression, feigned helplessness, the value of genuine helplessness, and how to handle helplessness. But first a couple of stories.

Stories of helplessness

This past week I have had no less than three men speak of feeling helpless. One man, a Catholic priest, chose to seek my counsel regarding the effects of the current pandemic had on him and on his parishioners. He reported that he had two issues: the feeling of loss and the fear of the unknown effects of the virus. Then he told me first of the worries he had about catching the coronavirus, or perhaps his sister catching the virus together with the effect that such a thing would have on her family given that she is a single parent. While painful, he could see himself coping with dying, or tragic as it might be, he could cope with his sister dying because he could see himself through these possibilities. However, what was most challenging for him was to think of how he might be called upon to serve his congregation. He noted, for instance, that many of his parishioners were seniors who could be most susceptible to becoming ill. If that were to happen, he thought, what would he do to serve them: stay at home and talk to them on the phone; visit one of them or a group of them at their homes or in the hospital, visit their relatives, or what? Secondly, he noted the concern for the forthcoming Holy Week, namely the week leading up to Easter, which is the most significant week of the church year. He wondered how he might handle Easter? As he spoke of these concerns, particularly those related to his congregation, I asked him how he felt. Helpless, he said. Then all changed in the conversation. Somehow, oddly, he felt better. We discussed, back and forth, certain theological and biblical matters related to fear, love, trust, and faith, but the lasting feeling he came to was helplessness. We discussed, for instance, how God is yet in command of the universe, and that we are but His servants in some way. But aside from the theological part of our discussion, he continued to feel “better” having admitted to feeling helpless. Just admit to feeling helpless. This priest’s helpless is essentially spiritual, i.e. seeing how God is in command, not he.

I saw Jack this week and heard the “H” word from him but in regards to a very different situation. Jack is married and desperately wants to stay married after seemingly been happily married for 30-some years. However, his wife is planning to leave him, apparently as a kind of separation, sometime soon. This I’d devastating to Jack. First, he is an evangelical Christian, and feels that such things are just wrong, but equally important he doesn’t know what he has done wrong, much less what he could do now to forestall such a drastic action as being separated. Jack is a very outgoing guy, a person who has been quite successful in his working years even though at the present he is working at a job that does not suit him. Jack has been successful in ministry, sales, and general management over these years and has generally been highly regarded. He has no particular addictions save one, which might call a food addiction. He is bereft of any understanding of why his wife is leaving him and has worked to hear what she has said about what she thinks he has done wrong. Yet nothing really makes sense to him even as he tries desperately to figure out what is going on with his wife. Our recent discussions have centered around the fact that he is a “we” person and then a “you” person despite his extraverted ways. (You might profit by reading my blog on “We, You, I people”). This means that he looks for connection, and when he can’t find it, looks to what is going on with his wife, always coming up with zero understanding of why she should be doing what she is doing. He feels helpless. Jack’s helplessness seems rooted in the fact that he has a deuce of a time coming out of his “we” and “you” orientation towards an “I” orientation, meaning who he is, how he feels, what he does, and what he says. Jack’s helplessness is his difficulty, almost impossibility, of looking at himself rather than his wife and their relationship.

The third man I saw this week speaking of helplessness is a person who, indeed, is suffering from a Major Depressive Disorder (MDD). You must know by now that I use this diagnostic label, or any diagnosis for instance, very rarely and with great caution. People use the term “depression” so freely, as with all other popular diagnoses, that the word is meaningless for the most part. The symptoms of MDD are disturbances in three areas of life: sleeping, eating, and energy. True MDD sufferers may suffer from all three or just one, but the primary symptom of MDD is energy, usually low energy. We call this condition anhedonia, which means lack of energy, fatigue, or lack of interest and drive. Such is the case for Bruce. More specifically, when we were working together, we addressed an early family situation that was less than functional, and so I asked him how he felt when he was a child in this situation. “Helpless,” he said. This is a guy who survived and thrived in life somewhat based on a life of “just doing what is needed to be done,” and how has collapsed. Why? He ran out of energy. Anhedonia. His brain is saying something like, “It’s time for you to take a time out and rest until you can finish all these feelings that you have necessarily repressed for decades.”

These three stories just this week, and many more in previous weeks. I did my best to help these guys feel helpless. Help them feel helpless, you say? Why? More later. Now, to discuss some helplessness that is really not helpless.

False Helplessness

This is a delicate discussion. Delicate because I am loathe to use words such as “false,” much less lazy, avoiding, addicting, lying, and such that are derogatory with no real value. Such words only serve the speaker, not the individual. This having been said, many people have fallen into a genuine feeling of helplessness because they have not grown up. Not grown up; what does that mean? It means that some element of emotional/social maturity has eluded them for some good reason. The two origins of failing to grow up (emotionally and socially) is deprivation or indulgence. Plus, both of them always lead to shame. The deprived child puts up a big fuss because she is not receiving what she needs, and then she is shamed for wanting what he actually needs. The indulged child puts a bit fuss because he thinks he should have everything that he wants, and then is shamed for wanting more than he should have. Whether from deprivation or indulgence, a child comes to view him/herself as helpless in life: helpless to get what he wants or needs. We can call the indulged child spoiled or the deprived demanding, but both of these children are just wanting to get from the world what they actually need. The deprived child needs to have nurturance and guidance; the indulged child needs to be limited. However, when one has had either of these unfortunate circumstances (and some children actually receive both, oddly), it is rare that they ever find a way to get away from feeling helpless because they continue to think/feel that the outside world should provide to them what they want. There is little distinction between wants and needs in such children, nor in the adults they become. Even though we who have received a modicum of limitation and encouragement might think otherwise, people in this feeling of helplessness truly feel and think that they are not able to do something. At this point people in this emotional/social immature condition find some kind of reasoning or addictive behavior that keeps them helpless.

Of the many people I know who truly feel this false helplessness I know of a woman who feels completely at the mercy of one or more physical ailments she has, a man who “can’t” find a way to get a job, a young girl wo at 14 really “needs” someone to help her remember to flush the toilet, a boy of 7 who thinks that he should win every game and it is “unfair” when someone else wins, a person in poverty thinking that rich people should give him money, and a wealthy woman who thinks that she has to protect her millions from the dangers of such people.

It is a challenge to feel any kind of helpless, but when a person has had a life of feeling helpless, it is extremely hard. And it is hard to befriend such a person, and harder yet to deal with such a person in your family.

A personal story

So do ever feel helpless? Not much, not often, and not for long, that is until recently. I am not at liberty to discuss the exact nature of my feeling helpless except to note that it has to do with what I should do and should not do in dealing with a particularly challenging family member. (By the way, this is not Deb, as she also feels some of the helplessness in this situation.) Given that my value system is “God first, work second, wife third, friends fourth, and family fifth,” I have found that I have needed to examine how I need/should deal with this family situation. It has been much like that I heard of from my priest patient, and it has brought me to my knees more than once. I feel a certain common feeling with him as I traverse these murky waters. So this brings me to the “so what” and “what can we do” part of this blog.

What can we do about feeling helpless, and perhaps get over it?

  1. Absolutely #1: accept that you feel helpless. If you don’t do this, you will not be able to manage it, find ways to survive, ultimately find ways to thrive, and ultimately find a place for normal helplessness in your life. This goes for the short-term helplessness of the coronavirus, the intermediate term helpless of serious depression, or the lifelong feeling of helpless due to indulgence or deprivation
  2. Come to grips with the fact that you, along with every other person in the world, feel helpless from time to time. It is the way of the world. How many people have you heard on the street who have said in regards to the current epidemic, “You have to accept what you have and get through it.”
  3. Avoid a tendency to try to fix helplessness. Helplessness can’t be fixed. It has to be faced, felt, and finished, just like every other difficult feeling. Face it; feel it; finish it. You don’t fix it.
  4. Share your feeling of helplessness with just one trusted friend, hopefully someone who will not think that s/he has to fix you, but can share with you this feeling, just as we need people to share our loves and our losses.
  5. Find a way to accept this helplessness as part of the way the universe unfolds. For me as a theist, I find that it is profitable for me to remind myself that “God is yet in control the last time I checked,” noting that I certainly don’t like all that God does, nor should. For people who are nontheistic it is equally possible to find a way to see that, as Einstein said, “The universe is friendly”…eventually.
  6. Note that your feeling of helpless decreases when you begin to accept, talk to someone, allow it to run a course, and find a real solace in God or the universe at large.

Passion, Purpose, and Product

Ron Johnson appreciation, Feelings, mindfulness, Opportunity, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

A good life is a life that produces something. I have to very careful here because “producing” doesn’t necessarily mean some kind of physical product, like the infamous “widget.” A product may be an idea, perhaps an idea that changes the world, or at least part of the world, for good. The product might be interpersonal, where someone is meaningfully helped in life. The product might be some kind of physical movement, like dance, drama, or chiropractic where the movement is good for people. And, of course, the product might be some kind of widget. A life without a product is not worth living. Sadly, many people do not have a product in their lives despite their having worked very hard at something or as the result that they haven’t worked very hard at something. Let’s start with passion.

Passion

Let me explain these three words before I say more about the product. First, the passion. Passion is one of those words that is undefinable, like I have written about before, most importantly the words feeling, love, wisdom, meaning, and many other psychological/philosophical terms. Recall the known universe is composed of (at least) three undefined terms: time, distance, and mass. We all know what time and distance are, and we might say that mass is something like physical stuff (sorry physicists; I’m doing my best here). We know what these elements are but they are not defined. Velocity is defined as distance over time, but distance and time are not defined. Likewise, feelings, as we use the term is that which emanates from our inner self or soul, but there I have used another undefined term. All of this talk is about the centrality of many concepts and words that represent those concepts that are real but undefined. Passion is undefined although we know what it is and we know what it does, just like we understand feelings, time, and love.

Passion is some kind of mixture of feelings that themselves are comprised of the four elements of feelings: physical sensation, emotion, cognition, and activity. One has passion when he or she “feels” a desire for something good. God for the person and good for others. Thus, passion leads to something good…or ideally should lead to something good. We may have passion for a football team, a country, physical work, play, or any number of ideas, things, or activities. We can even have passion for something that is not real, like a TV character who somehow inspires us to this undefined element of passion. If we don’t have passion, we can never have a product. Many people fail to find a passion in life. I am dealing with such a person in my current practice.

Jake has no interest in anything. He likes to play video games and is often on his cell phone playing or rambling through the Internet, but he has no interest in doing anything good. I’m sure, somewhere down inside of him, he has a real core self that is pure and godly, but beyond this esoteric understanding of Jake, I see no interest in anything that has any lasting value. He is like many young men: he likes sex and he likes money, but even these likes are quite fleeting because he has neither at the present time because he doesn’t know how to nurture his passion. Jake came to me because he was “depressed” but that word, that diagnosis, does him no good because it is just a statement of his lacking passion. On the other hand, I know many men who have very specific passions in life including boating, fishing, hunting, dancing, playing golf, interpersonal connectedness, raising children, working hard at a secretarial job, gardening, and writing. My own primary passion these years if for writing although I am equally passionate about therapy and a few other secondary passions like basketball and minor carpentry. Passion is great, but passion is not enough. You have to have purpose.

Purpose

While passion is undefined and something you can only understand by observation and by feeling, purpose is quite specific. Simply put, purpose is the drive that put passion to work so that there can be a product. Purpose is movement, whether by mind or body, that pushes one’s passion into something real and meaningful. I have to be careful about using the term “real” here because real could be quite esoteric, like an idea that could change the world, or it could be real like painting a house. I know, for instance a professional painter who is passionate about his work and can’t wait until he can return to “the wall,” as he calls it. The purpose of John’s passion is to pain well and finish well. Likewise the purpose I have in this present blog is to be of some service, but as I write these words, I have not completed a product, which will hopefully be a document of some use to someone.

Sam is a really smart guy. He is also an analyst by nature (you’ll have to read the analyst blog), which means that he loves problems to solve. The other day I was with him in a situation that had a kind of conundrum, which perplexed him but also intrigued him. The dilemma we had at the moment had no significant value in the world at large, but it consumed Sam for the moments that we were uncertain as to what we should do in the situation we were in. At first, I thought I could recommend a course of action, namely how I saw the dilemma, but he would have none of it because he was so taken by the problem that he could have spent hours just contemplating what he (or we) should do. I gave Sam as much time as I could genuinely give him and then said that I thought it was best that he take his course of action. He was slightly upset with me because I evidently didn’t want to muse about what he (we) might do. Many people are like Sam, musing, thinking, feeling, dreaming, wondering, or analyzing. Behind their musing and such is a deep passion for something. In Sam’s case, his passion is to solve problems. But to my mind he has never solved any significant problem in his life and has spent hours and years musing. Some people get lost in the things they own but they are not really passionate about things, while other people are passionate about relationships while not having any, and still others are passionate about ideas but never find one that leads to a product.

I also know of many people who have passion and purpose and go farther with it. Fist, however, before they actually do anything, they achieve some sort of skill at the doing this passion. I have a friend my age who is passionate about several things, one of which is water skiing. A couple years ago he water skied some 100-plus times over the summer. Furthermore, he is passionate about helping people learn to water ski and even more passionate about have weekly get-togethers where everybody talks, plays, eats, and water skies. I know of a man who is passionate about matters theological, another matters psychological, and another matters that have to do with construction. In all of these man there is some product, whether intellectual, relational, or physically productive. While many men get stuck in the first stage because they don’t have passion to do anything, many more get stuck in the second stage because they are willing to step forth and produce something.

Product

As central as passion is as a reflection of one’s soul, and as fun as it is to muse and consider this passion and what might be done with it, life is ultimately not meaningful if one does not have a product. As noted, the product be of almost any form, but it has to be something more than passion, which is beautiful, and purpose, which is fun. That having been said, it takes a number of things to move from passion and purpose to product. In a nutshell, it takes trial and error, or more accurately, many trials and many errors. Even more importantly, it takes the difficult experience of being misunderstood, misjudged, corrected, or challenged. You see why so few people get beyond passion and purpose: no one likes to make mistakes and no one likes to be criticized. Let me put some meat on the bones of this passion leads to purpose leads to product.

  • Mahatma Gandhi was a failure for most of his life. He failed in South Africa where his work began. He failed in India for decades. He failed in keeping India united instead of splitting into Pakistan and India. But his passion led to purpose, which in turn led to product: the freeing of 600 million Indians from British rule.
  • Martin Luther King was largely a failure. We remember his “dream” speech, which was wonderful, of course, and the peace marches he led. But he did not succeed during his lifetime, and his legacy continues strong where his product is still unfolding.
  • Sojourner Truth, a very significant Black woman in the 19th century who said, “Ain’t I a woman?” when questioned about her beliefs. Read about her. She had passion, purpose, and did something.

But the people who actually do something, actually have a product in their lives don’t have to be these well-known people. Most are not well-known, nor do they want to be. They just want to do something important, something good in life, maybe like:

  • Helping a challenged child learn to walk or talk
  • Be a recovering alcoholic and help others to recover
  • Write a song that is good for one person, one family, or one country

May you find your passion in life, purpose to do something, and then do something. People will love you. People will hate you. But it’s not about people loving or hating you. It is about the passion that God has given you that needs to be given to the world in the form of product.