Passion or Appetite?

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Whenever I'm about to reinvent myself in a significant way, I find myself reading a lot of Emerson.  Today I came across something he'd written that I'd not heard before, but I found it both provocative and essential:

     “I find that the Americans have no passions, they have appetites.”

        -- Ralph Waldo Emerson.

Being neither American nor inclined to want to be beaten with a large stick ~grins~, I'll simply say that this observation spoke to me personally.  It identifies one of my greatest internal conflicts: stickiness.

I have always considered myself to be a very passionate person.  Having said that, this nasty little poke with a stick from Emerson's 1800's brand of wisdom has me asking myself if I have the right to claim this label at all.  I do feel things fiercely and deeply, and that is wonderful fuel spurring me on when I go running headlong into the next thing that calls.  But there's the rub: so many things do call, and my ability/desire to stick with them is often my greatest challenge.

This is a problem if you look at it in almost any light: makes it tough to stay put, stick to a career, be happy with one person, or to ever really feel full or know the true sense of the word "enough".  Some people might call it OCPD, or ADD, or simply fickle or even selfish and irresponsible.  And yet I've managed to be successful in spite of it.  While I do look back and feel at times a sense of grief over recognizing this as a deficit in the traditional sense of a person's life, I am also deeply grateful for living in the place and time I do.  In the niche that I've managed to carve for myself it's served me well.  As a journalist, being constantly propelled by "the chase" is a delicious habit.  It keeps me hungry, curious, always running after the next story to share.  As an artist, it keeps me buoyant and colourful and constantly inspired.  God bless the internet and Second Life, for those two mediums have provided the most provocative and fertile playground for the two most intrinsic parts of my inner life as a breadwinner and insatiable consumer.

Where this is a challenge is in personal relationships.  There are people that I connect with in a very rich and heartfelt way, and yet no matter how much I enjoy their company, I rarely seek it.  I do tend to hold people at arm's length.  Even my closest friends and family know what a gigantic pain in the ass I can be when it comes to simple, normal things.  I hate talking on the phone.  I don't do well with a lot of small talk, and within minutes of reconnecting I am often restless and uncomfortable again.  A pretty boring, run-of-the-mill personality disorder I'm sure, but an inconvenient one when you really do care a great deal about the people that you have so much trouble wanting to connect with in a deeper way.

There are exceptions.  It's at odds with my bleeding heart, because at my core I remain a better world scout and always will be.  My partner Baron is also an anomaly in many ways, perhaps because he's so much like me and doesn't question or seem critical of the quirks.  But Emerson's observation does have me scratching my head and asking myself how much I may want or need to confront this particular issue if I really want to move forward in my life.

Do I really have passion, or merely appetites?  Constant, glorious, intense appetites, but appetites nonetheless.  It's not that I haven't found my niche.  In fact, I've found it again and again.  It's that in spite of the thrill of the chase, and often getting what I want, I still feel quite empty at the end of the day.

I know because of the few anomalies that do exist in my life that there is a great reward attached to cultivating a more mature and intimate relationship with the people and opportunities in my life, and in my gut I know that I do want to know what it feels like to say "this is enough" and finally mean it.

In those instances I've allowed myself to let it in, what I am gifted with is richer, deeper, simpler and more enduring happiness and peace of mind.

So, tonight I'll thank Emerson for poking me with a stick, and hope that I'll be wise enough to really listen and finally choose it for myself.