RCL #2- No Regrets
In Part 1 of It’s What I Do by Lynsey Addario, Addario recounts one of the most memorable pieces of advice given by her Nana. Nana’s story was about her missed chance at love with her young lover, Sal. Unfortunately, while Sal had passion and intimate love, he had neither money nor a stable future ahead for Nana, so she chose a man that could support her financially, Earl. While Nana has happy with Earl and their life together, he never showed her the passion and fire like Sal. Because of this, she always regretted her missed chance at love.
When Addario recalls this story, she simply states, “I never wanted to regret the kisses I missed”. This story applies to her life both in her relationships throughout her life and her career. With everything in her crazy life, she never wanted to regret missing a huge opportunity. For her career, she would often make extremely risky decisions in hope of a successful outcome that would not be available if she didn’t take the initial risk. This story also provides some background to Addario’s tenacity in pursuit of her passion. It always provided her with an incentive to push harder and take the risks.
For my passion blog, I am writing about my life with Celiac Disease. Honestly, I didn’t have much say in being gluten free, but I was able to decide whether or not I could use it in a more positive light and pursue it as a passion of mine. One event that had a great impact on me and helped to shape my passion was shortly after I was diagnosed with Celiac Disease. I remember feeling sorry for myself that I couldn’t eat pizza when I encountered a girl in my high school with various intestinal disorders.
She was only able to eat food through a tube in her stomach.
When I saw this, I recall putting my thoughts of self pity into perspective and remembering that at least I could still eat food. At that point, I was able to see this burden in a new light and eventually my passion started to fall into place from there.
For the remainder of my passion blog posts, I am going to talk about different stories I have about being gluten free including moments like the one mentioned above, and different interesting aspects about Celiac Disease that many non-gluten free people are unaware of.
Hey Nora! This is such an interesting topic – I didn’t know you had Celiac Disease, and I applaud you for sharing your story with everyone! This blog post alone shows how passionate you are about embracing this quality about yourself and seeing it with light instead of darkness. I really liked how you connected your passion blog topic to Addario’s story of her grandmother. Pushing yourself and taking risks in order to truly embrace your passion is very admirable, and although you can’t eat pizza 🙁 you still have the mindset to pursue this characteristic with tenacity, much as Addario has. Well done!