The Art of Living with PASSION

What are you passionate about - what do you care deeply about? Women Today asked this question to 40 women representing more than 20 countries on five continents. They answered in a chorus of animated voices, each unique and yet altogether harmonious.

Women, it seems, share a universal longing to live with passion. They want to invest their time and energy in pursuits that are supremely important to them. Capturing the brightly-coloured and transparent stories of these women into a mosaic, this article reflects their thoughts on where passion comes from and what it looks like in real life. Often linked with sex, suffering and strong emotion, passion seems to universally mean one thing: intensity.

Lynne Hill, a 39-year-old from Oxfordshire, England, describes passion as "Hot-blooded, emotional, exciting - feeling strongly about something." However, there is, she says, "a difference between passion about a subject and a bit of passion with your husband." Lynne is intensely passionate about her husband, as well as her two sons, but also loves horses and dancing. She is a British Horse Society instructor and has a diploma in dance.

Someone as vivacious and talented as Lynne is might seem to be naturally passionate. But she'd be the first to tell you that knowing and living your passions is an ongoing process. Though passion comes from the heart, living it is also an act of the will. Every woman can live with passion. Perhaps you're wondering how. The women we talked to told us what helps them nurture their passion: they look inside, they listen to others and they turn pain into passion.

Look Inside

Your passion is as personal as your fingerprint. No one can thrust passion on you. Nor can it be conjured up. It's there, inside, just like your heartbeat. It's the thing or things that really matter to you, that you pound the table over.

Ginger Chiang from Taiwan calls this inner knowing of passion "conscious living." She says, "I discovered my passions when I asked myself what makes me feel most happy." Ginger works for a prestigious business and politics magazine. But after thinking about what she really enjoyed in her work - planning, proposals and projects - Ginger decided to give up her high-powered job to direct a non-profit organization for cyber-education.

Today, she doesn't regret her 14 years as a journalist. Instead, she says, "The years I spent on that job gave me the ability to live the life I'm living now. Many people don't think about how they live," says Ginger. "Their lives are routine and they're not conscious of why they're doing the things they're doing. You need to make effort to discover your passions. If you love something very much, you feel pleasure when you're doing it, and you're committed to do it."

Listen to Others

Receiving compliments and encouragement - believing and embracing them - can give us that extra push to pursue our passions. The seeds of praise planted in Priya Sukumar's childhood grew into her life's calling. "As a child, I'd do little kind deeds and get positive feedback, and this would motivate to keep doing good," the 27-year-old Indian immigrant says. She grew up believing "service to man is service to God."

Today Priya, who has a degree in social work, co-ordinates a program in Auckland, New Zealand, to support crime victims and people affected by crisis. "I get very upset when people are abused, oppressed or treated unfairly," she says. "It is this passion that motivated me to train and to work in this field. I put in some long hours because I believe in being available at any time for emergencies. It's not the money that motivates me."

Turn Pain Into Passion

Positive reinforcement isn't the only thing that fosters passion. In fact, many women said it is born out of pain. It can be the pain of a life that seems to be going the wrong way, as it was for South African artist Marisa Iuculano. Although passionate by personality, Marisa let her passions lie dormant for six years while she was involved in a difficult relationship. "I didn't lift a paintbrush," she says. "I didn't dance, I never saw friends. I didn't even feel passion in my relationship." Praying for guidance and listening to her instincts redirected Marisa's life. For a few months now, she has been married to a man with whom she recently took Latin American dance lessons. She's also painting.

A tragic incident turned Taiwanese legislator Tina Pan into an activist. "When I was a councillor 17 or 18 years ago, a woman was raped by five foreigners," she explains. "Though she reported it to the police, no one was willing to handle the case. The hospital refused to give her any document as evidence of what she suffered." Frustrated, Tina helped establish the Modern Women Foundation, which cooperates with the police, medical staff and legal authorities to respond to victims of sexual assault. As a member of the Nationalist Party she continues to champion laws that protect women's equality, safety and dignity.

"I never thought I'd be a politician," says Tina, a 43-year-old wife and mother. But driven by her concern for women's rights, she has adopted Dr. Sun Yatsen's motto: "Politics deals with the things that touch everyone. Since we cannot control the length of our lives." says Tina, "finding the meaning of life, and making it glorious, becomes important."

Willing to Pay the Price

When you care deeply about something, that caring invokes commitment and risk. Silvana G. Bertaconi Reis of Brazil is a dancer. The fluid grace of seemingly effortless movements is only achieved by spending half her day working out. "At 32, I've had to sacrifice. There is pain and physical indisposition, but I want to continue. Dancing gives me internal life." Silvana also dances to "impart life" to other people.

Unlike most dancers who grow up with the sport, Silvana didn't begin training in earnest until she was 19. She didn't attend a dance academy either but was encouraged by friends who spied her talent.
She finds inspiration in being a model for the new generation of dancers. "They see motivation in us because we're older." Her advice: "You have to live fully what you love. There are troubles to get what you really love. Overrun barriers, difficulties. Survive in the rain, in the sun, in the storms."

Be Flexible, Be Creative, Be Whole

Passion sounds messy. If you discover you're passionate about something you're not currently working at, do you have to disrupt your life to pursue your "new" passions? What about the constraints of time and money? Even the best things in life - relationships with family, children and spouse - can have a way of sidelining passion. The women we talked to told us that passion has to flex with the ebb and flow of life.

For Russian Marina Veduta, 44, music was everything. She recalls when, as a student, she heard the êtudes of Russian composer Skyrabin. "I don't have the words to express my delight! But what I remember clearly is that when it was over, I thought I had nothing else to live for now, that I would never experience greater emotions." Today, Marina finds delight in taking care of her two daughters and giving music lessons. "I'm busy doing the things I love," she says.

"Often I had to sacrifice my musical career for the sake of my family, but I never regretted it afterwards. And though I haven't become a famous pianist, everything is great at home," she says. When we talked with her, Marina was looking forward to taking her oldest daughter to Verdi's Macbeth, one of the ways she continues to nurture her passions. "Don't hesitate to spend time with your passions, to give your whole self to something or someone," Marina says. "Feel brightly. Life can be too grey otherwise."

In the ebb and flow of life, one passion may fade, only for another to take its place.

That's how it has been for Lynne. Hooked on horseback riding since age six, she didn't even have a boyfriend till she was 18. "I thought horses were it," she says, looking back. "The feeling of the wind cantering in your hair - you can't get it anywhere else." Over time however, marriage, pregnancy and financial constraints have kept Lynne from pursuing an equestrian lifestyle with unbridled abandon. Still, she finds an outlet for her passion - at least for now - in volunteering to judge horse shows. She also enjoys encouraging her son Alex, who, at eight, evidences an affinity for horses. "If horses bring me and my son together," she says, "it means quality time and good parenting."

During this season of life, family is Lynne's main passion. Her own painful past heightened her desire to invest her best in relationships. "I come from a broken home, so I try to make it balanced for my children. I spend quality time with them. I go to school functions. I take the children to historic places, teach them things they wouldn't learn on television.

"Someday, I'll get back to my other passions," says Lynne. In the meantime, this medical secretary dances with her children in the kitchen and expresses her creative side by expanding her cooking repertoire. She dreams of one day owning her own stable, maybe even a ranch. And she keeps her heart set on living passionately. "A lot of people have a stiff upper lip, especially women. It is important for your quality of life to have passions. You should let them out."

Related Reading:
Craving Cleaver's Cookies
Doing What You Love Best
Nine Principals of Effective Leadership

- By Stacy Wiebe with Heather Harris (Canada), Meena Narayan (New Zealand), Isabel Roland (Brazil), Olga Taranova (Russia), Joanne Thomas (England), and Joy Wan (Taiwan). Stacy Weibe is the editor of Christian Women Today.