The Passion and All Of Our Other Passions

Spring began with a snowfall last night, while a single word from the season offers contrasting meanings, bringing the religious and secular worlds into collision yet again. I feel right at home.

Yesterday the sky was clear blue and the air fresh and cold for Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week. And so the Passion begins. In my particular life, this marks just over a quarter of a century since I’ve been fully aware—or at least as fully aware as someone like me can be—of the full shape, gravity, and resonance of this time for all of Christendom.

I still have plenty to learn; but one thing I comprehend is how the Passion of Jesus is in its own category. The excruciating nature of it, as well as the astounding result of so much enduring, makes this experience different from the lower-case passions we experience either fleetingly or more permanently in our regular lives, more than two thousand years after Jesus entered Jerusalem.

A glance in any dictionary will show that the word “passion” has a few distinct definitions, and sometimes the order of them varies. Should “the suffering and death of Jesus” always come first? Perhaps, given the magnitude of the story. This meaning definitely carried over to name the fruit found in some species of the passionflower, whose sections –way back when–suggested to somebody objects from the Crucifixion. Maybe if the red bulbous things full of seeds populated our kitchen counters as much as apples and bananas do, the association all the way back to the Last Supper and Calvary would sink in more frequently.

The truth is, though, we’re more likely to use the noun as meaning “a strong and barely controllable emotion” or, and this is significantly different, “a strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity.” Let’s consider these one at time.

We human beings are volatile creatures, so our strong emotions can— as we know all too well– run the gamut between raging anger and tender love. Indeed, some might argue that they are two sides of the very same coin. We could probably do without the first, and spare plenty of lives and countless feelings in the process, but the second enables us to reach the greatest height of our spiritual capability.

Can anyone imagine a happy and fruitful marriage, for instance, without passion as the original  force? Well, maybe, but it would surely be a muted version of the full-palette kind that many of us have been fortunate enough to know.

On the other hand, one of the world’s great religions would have us actually overcome our passions so that we can achieve true serenity. Our desires are problematic because there is always the likelihood that they won’t be fulfilled…and then what?  Welcome to the “downside” of being drawn so powerfully towards someone or something.

From passion arises sorrow and from passion arises fear. If a man is free from passion, he is free from fear and sorrow. – Buddha

Of course, being “free from” rather than “free to” may be like having an umbrella in the rain instead of running around in it joyously, but this would take a while to sort out.

So clearly the “strong and barely controllable emotion” definition has its drawbacks. What about “the strong liking or desire for or devotion to some activity” definition? Surely it must be good, just about all the time, to enjoy studying the chemistry of cells, playing ping-pong, composing music, climbing mountains, building furniture, or— well, you get the idea.

We’re on firmer ground here; I mean, who can argue with people doing what they love to do? We’re happier and better to others around us, after all, when we’re not thwarted in following our particular stars.

The only real problem with this definition, it seems to me, is that we’ve become a kind of society that sometimes puts too much emphasis on our ability to say that we do in fact have activities worthy of our devotion, activities that we can happily lose ourselves in completely. For students applying to college, especially, this can be a kind of make-or-break thing. Are you just an average kid who does pretty well and enjoys hanging around with your friends? Oh come on! Find some way to distinguish yourself, stand out.

Here’s a blurb that I found on a website called “Teen Life.”  The trick, if you buy in, is to try to concoct a new version of yourself:

Dr. Katherine Cohen, an independent university admissions counselor and founder of Ivy Wise, an educational consulting company, advises her clients, ‘Dig deep and think of the things you really enjoy. Chances are you have a deep passion for something; you just don’t realize it yet. There are many ways to turn an interest that seems shallow on the surface into a deep and impactful activity; it just takes some creativity and a little help from parents or a college counselor.’

Oh great, just what teens should be doing— turning a simple pleasure, or maybe even just a pastime, into an “impactful activity” with adults nudging them along. Yecch!

I don’t think for a minute that having, or in some cases fabricating, a “deep passion” should be a litmus test for leading a full life. As so often happens, the term has become over-used and thus weakened. It would do well to become more muscular. This week, I’m going to see what that upper-case Passion, culminating in Easter as usual, has to teach us about the business of regular living, through times of ecstatic fulfillment as well as crushing disappointment, and everything in between.