“You can’t know this right now, but… your ragged, rugged honesty… your crazy, passionate, naked vulnerability… your trusting plunge into the unknown of Life at every turn… your journey of love and healing… these change your world, the world of those around you and the world as a whole. Someday you’ll know how important you are.” - Jacob Nordby

THE PENDULUM OF PASSION

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One VERY powerful word - that infiltrates practically every single facet of our lives - One VERY powerful word that we simply cannot live without.

PASSION!

There is passion in business, passion in relationships, passion in sports, passion in expression, passion in intimacy and ecstasy, passion in living and life – the list is endless.

Passion is the breath of life.

It is an emotion which can swing us to heights of complete and utter elation and in the same breathe, throw us into the deepest darkest corners of despair and desperation.

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On the up-swing, passion is probably the most invigorating emotion to experience. It fills you with relentless desire and seemingly impenetrable enthusiasm, but on the down swing, it can lead us into rather volatile and explosive emotional situations.

I consider myself an exceptionally passionate individual and whilst having this attribute in vast volumes has had huge advantages in many facets of my life, it is also something that I have really struggled with along the way. Being naturally passionate by nature generally goes hand in hand with being largely expressive, which in essence means that you mostly have an inability to shut your trap about anything that you feel strongly about. Lol. And as most who live with this dilemma will know, it will often land us in hot water.

For myself, this is because I am not just “generically passionate” about one thing in my life. I am passionate about ALL things, all emotions and all circumstance that resonate with me.

When I am happy, I want to celebrate and embrace that happiness – I am passionate about that moment of happiness. It comes with a desire to share it, shout it and live it to its fullest. And likewise when I am sad, I am passionately sad. I will engage in the same levels of emotional severity - experiencing that emotion fully.

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This demonstrative kind of behaviour is active in every area of my life. The challenge however, enters when it comes to the vocally expressive arena of being passionate. Often, little time is afforded to thought as the action is fuelled and driven solely by emotion – which brings hasty reactions or outbursts because I feel particularly strongly about whatever “it” is.

As much as these moments of unfiltered passionate verbal expression can be wonderfully accepted by the recipient they are delivered to, especially when they are demonstrations of affection or love, but on the other side of the coin, they can be equally disastrous when the expression comes from a place of passionate hurt, frustration, insecurity or anger and these emotional outbursts are often accompanied by irrational action which is almost always followed by regret at the end of the day.

I am a far cry from perfect, and I have truckloads of issues. I have endured more heartache in my life than I even care to divulge and as much as I believe I have on certain levels become a stronger person for it – I cannot sit here and say that I do not wear the scars of many of those wounds and this fact, I suppose adds to the lack of restraint, excessive passion and knee jerk reactions in certain situations. I may be a very difficult individual to “handle” at times, because of all my emotional baggage – but I have never let it stop me from continually TRYING to at least become a better and more emotionally complete person each day that I live and breathe!

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No matter what, I always do my best to try and have a positive outlook on things rather than the opposite – but sometimes my scars surface. Others may not understand them or even be able to relate to them, but guess what - they are all VERY real to me – and when I am cornered they all crack open like healing wounds and start bleeding again. I don’t know if we ever TRULY heal 100% from the bad things we have experienced in life. I know I try to… but whether or not that has an eventual flawless success rate is yet to be seen. I have forgiven and I have moved on from so many situations, but in moments of high emotional intensity and PASSION… your reactions often become more knee-jerk than conscious – and this is often where you lose the plot and everyone looks at you like you are some sort of emotional basket case.

I don’t know whether my hurts will ever completely leave me or whether I will walk around carrying certain insecurities and fears forever, but it is irrelevant to me actually. I am who I am and like the below quote very aptly depicts…

“I'm selfish, impatient and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I am out of control and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.”― Marilyn Monroe

Perhaps the combination of my passion and scars makes me a

“PASSIONATE CRAZY PERSON” lol!

Well, if that is the case – I am ok with that. It may not be the easiest thing to live with at times, but everything in life has its own balance and I would never sacrifice the positive outcomes of my uninhibited passion, just to be rid of the negative ones… NO WAY!

“Politeness is okay, but it gets old and boring. You want to attack life with a passion, not a politeness, you want people to think about you and remember you and say "she is so passionate" you don't want people to think about you and remember you and say "she is so polite," because, who cares about polite?” - C. JoyBell C.

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Until next time...

Much Love from Cape Town, South Africa xxx

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