RCL #2: It’s What I Do

In Part I of her autobiography, Addario recalls the time her grandmother Nina told one account of her own struggle with passion in life and how an opportunity was missed because she failed to recognize passion. Because this opportunity did not arise until much later in life, Nina’s realization of the previous existence of passion arose at an unlikely and untimely point in her life, proving that the passion of the past was still alive, but no longer during the right time.

Addario’s choice to include this anecdote in the telling of her own story was more than likely intentional; there is meaning and purpose behind it. Perhaps the purpose of Nina’s story was to serve as a lesson to Addario’s readers. Because Nina let her passion pass her in life, why should Addario or even her readers do the same? And if your passion does give up on you, don’t let yourself give up on it. If you reconnect with that spark that ignites your flame later in life, why not rekindle that? Our passion is what drive us to succeed in life; it’s what points us in the direction of our dreams becoming reality. You must seize the opportunity of passion when it comes along, because although some do, you might not be lucky enough to receive a second chance to take hold and own it.

Personally, I found one of my passions quite unexpectedly in senior year gym class. For every 4.5 weeks of one semester of gym class, new opportunities were offered to the students to be able to choose which activity they wished to participate in for the next few weeks of class. I had only one other close friend in that large class of around 80 people, so we obviously chose to do the same activity together for every class rotation. One of the options offered was an “adventure” class, where we learned and executed the fundamentals of rock climbing on our gym’s less than pristine rock wall. My friend and I were skeptical at first, but after the first week when we had passed our basic knot-tying and belaying tests and were able to get on the wall and start climbing, we instantly fell in love. To us, rock climbing is one of those physical activities that you forget is actually giving you a workout because you’re having so much fun. At times, it is definitely challenging, and it’s easy to lose optimism if things aren’t going your way, but as long as you don’t lose that passionate feeling you had when you first started, you can move mountains.

This is how I view the opportunity to pursue a passion blog of my choice in this class. Coffee has always been something I’m passionate about, and having an outlet to finally enact on this passion is incredible. As I begin my passion blog for the semester, I plan to never lose sight of or become disheartened from my source of inspiration for my writing.