Living life with passion

The natural world is full to bursting in August - nothing is held back, nothing is begrudged or stinted.  Maybe we can learn by watching this wholesale giving.  There are times when we need to conserve our physical energy but this isn't one of them.  And it is certainly not a time to hold back emotionally.  In fact if we learn to live life with pure passion and joy we could find life a much more delightful place. 

You know how some people are so passionate, so full of life and the joys of living that they virtually leave you breathless?  Well, why shouldn't we all have that sense of wonder and delight?  It doesn't mean that we have to become different people; just that we try to introduce a little verve and enthusiasm into our daily lives.

People think of passion as something that is inevitably to do with sex. Well yes, it is, but passion itself is much deeper than just sex.  It can touch every corner of our lives.

I learnt a great deal about the power of passion from the absolutely gorgeous American lecturer and workshop leader Denise Linn who is the living embodiment of passion.  A five minute conversation with her is enough to kick-start your whole week.  ‘Passion is about living life to the full; it's about excitement; about making life really worth living,’ she says.   But surely passion is something you simply either have or you don't have?  How can you learn to be passionate?  Denise says that, although as children we are naturally passionate creatures, as we go through our teens and into adult life we gradually learn not to be passionate.   

We are taught that to be an adult is to be calm, in control, rational, considered - even cynical.  The passion is inexorably drawn out of us until we have forgotten what it means to cry at a sunset, to become lost in a painting, to giggle like a child.

Society regards passion as emotion out of control, as an irrational force that, left to run wild, would grind industry to a halt within the day.  In fact quite the opposite is true.  Live your life with passion and you will become more effective in your work, more pleasant to live with and, most importantly, you will enjoy life to the full.

Denise insists that risk and passion go hand in glove. By learning to confront our fears of looking stupid, of making fools of ourselves, we can begin to take risks in life.  Once we believe we can stretch ourselves and do more, we can start to find out what we really want to do with our lives:  instead of living life safely, we will begin living passionately, to the full. 

DENISE’S TEN POINT PLAN FOR RECLAIMING PASSION

1.  Look back and remember what made you passionate as a child.  Tune in to that sense of childhood joy and maybe try reclaiming some of those activities.

2.  Think about what you are passionate about now.  What activities make you really lose yourself?  What causes are you passionate about?  Get involved.

3.  What stops you being passionate?  Work out what beliefs or anxieties prevent you from living with passion.

4.  Take risks.  Even small risks help you to push through your fear boundaries and gain confidence.  Be willing to make mistakes.

5.  Be kind.  Random acts of kindness (leaving a flower on desks at work, feeding a stranger's parking meter if it's run out) have a chain-reaction, making everyone feel good.

6.  Make a commitment to include activities you really enjoy into your life. 

7.  If you hate your job, find something - however small - that you can enjoy in it. 

8.  Imagine you were at the end of your life, looking back.  What would have given you fulfillment that you didn't do?  What would you regret not having done?  Why not do it now?

9.  Maintain passionate relationships by keeping your imagination alive.  Be spontaneous every so often - whisk your partner off for a picnic, buy a surprise present.

10.  Get in touch with your body.  Experiment with movement and music.  Crank up the music and street dance round the kitchen.  Dance is a wonderful means of freeing the straightjacket self.

This is an edited extract from the August chapter of my book The Natural Year – a seasonal guide to holistic health and beauty. Now available in e-format for Kindle and containing a lot of previously unpublished material.  The book is a season by season, month by month guide to living in tune with the natural world. 

"I read (and re-read!) this book many years ago and it inspired me and filled me with great hope. After loaning the book to several friends it eventually found a new home and I hope someone is now enjoying it as much as I did then! The philosophy seems so simple, yet it is so meaningful..." (from Amazon.com review)

I have kept the price low - about £2 from Amazon.co.uk or $3 from Amazon.com - so, if you fancy living more in tune with the seasons of the year, go buy. :-)

I hate...

I don’t hate much. I’m pretty equable most of the time. But right now two things are really pissing me off. Thing One: Muppets. Sorry, don’t get them. Maybe I’ve not met the good ones but Kermit and Miss Piggy are just plain…irritating. I want to light matches to their fur. It’s not the puppet thing. Truly.  I like Mongrels. Actually I like it quite a lot. Probably more than I should. I started watching it thanks to James who,  come to think about it, probably shouldn’t be watching it at all. Anyway.

Thing Two. Valentine’s Day. I spent last VD ensconced in a spa, dodging canoodling couples in the steam room and being the only person eating solo in the candlelit and balloon-festooned dining room. Frankly I’m not sure I’ve recovered yet.  I still wince at anything red and heart-shaped.

I abhor stiff scentless red roses. I don’t eat chocolates.  I don’t drink champagne. I can’t abide balloons. Why is it that Valentine’s infantalises normally sensible adults?  I’m all for indulging one’s childlike sense of fun but that doesn’t extend to going gooey over heart-shaped balloons. Balloons?  It’s not a fecking children’s birthday party for feck’s sake!  And soft toys – that’s the other one. Big pastel-coloured teddy bears clutching hearts with ‘I WUV U’. WTF? And the baby language – snugly wuggly baby waby possum blossom?

It’s not some middle-aged cynical thing either. I dreaded it way back when I was a teenager. In fact, the one time I managed to have a sort of boyfriend when I was at school, I ditched him the week before because I couldn’t bear the thought of it.  The certainty of disappointment. Not that he wouldn’t do or buy anything for it, but that it would be…dutiful.

 

And it’s not that I’m not a romantic. Far from it. It’s just that I can’t bear the commercial, fake, anodyne bastardisation of love.  As if love can be bought with a ready-made card and a token present. Or, even worse, the need to prove love with something expensive and ‘precious’.  The eating out in restaurants bits? Garn.  Something just smug and self-satisfied or dutiful and sad. Not to mention over-priced. 

If you like it, great. Go for it. Good luck to you. But me, I don’t feel love needs one special day out of a year. I don’t feel love needs to be put on show. I feel lovers should surprise one another with spontaneous affection/passion/preferably both or with seriously thoughtful, heartful tokens (not costly, but from the gut, heart, soul).  Whenever I’ve been out on Valentine’s Day (night) it’s all felt rather…sad somehow.  So many people going through the motions; doing what is expected; proclaiming to the world ‘I’m in a couple’ like it’s a badge of honour, a sign of belonging. It’s like cats spraying or dogs pissing - marking out their territory.  Should you really need to do that? 

Anonymous declarations of tormented passion, on the other hand?  Now those I do get.  I’ve always felt that Valentine’s Day shouldn’t be for the neat cosy couples, for domestic love, but for insecure, unhitched, unbridled, unsaddled, unstirruped (any more riding adjectives?) lust and longing. Is there anything more delicious than the frisson of an unknown admirer?  My father never understood this. Bless him, he’d send me Valentine Day cards with ‘Guess who?’ written on them in his very distinctive script. I loved him for it (he knew how the girls at school would sneeringly ask, ‘And how many did you get?’) but I craved mystery, suspense, not knowing. I wanted imagination, for feck’s sake!  

Did I get it? No. Not really.  Maybe that’s why I’ve got such a downer on the whole thing. Maybe I’m lamenting a youth in which I didn’t get the hopeless gesture; the beautiful poem; the gut-wrenching love song; the hand-made card…that nobody took me on a midnight picnic or swimming in a moonlit lake or blindfolded me and…

Or maybe I’m just odd. 

‘Can we agree not to do Valentine cards this year?’ I said to Adrian this morning.  I would hasten to add that I had bought him two packs of socks from Tesco earlier in the week and presented them to him with a wry, ‘Happy Valentine’s Day, darling.’ 

‘Are you sure?’ he said, his eyes first registering alarm (that he’d clearly forgotten) and then lighting up at the realisation that he wouldn’t have to race down surreptitiously to the shop.

‘Absolutely. You know I hate it.’

‘Well yes, but that’s what men are supposed to say, not women.’

I frowned, with a slight growl. ‘Are you saying I’m a man?’

‘No way, fella,’ he replied.