Certain conditions must be met before you could enjoy even the most intense and personal of your interests.
When the cost of entry and maintenance exceeds the substance you have placed into a ‘passion’ — all that you have developed it into, the structure and content and space you have afforded it to become something more than vague plans and a burning desire — the passion inevitably dies.
The most basic demonstration of this ‘substance’ is the gathering of tools and materials to engage in one’s craft, as well as acquiring the time and space in which to engage in activity.
But for a passion to exist beyond hopes, dreams, and failures, we must take this a step or two beyond the bare minimum.
One, your life must be possess enough order and stability to nurse this new baby pursuit into maturity without your life falling apart in the process. This usually mean being at least financially secure, as well as being mentally and emotionally available to fully engage with the chosen pursuit.
Two, you possess both the internal and external flexibility to dance with the shifts in the way you live life that rise whenever something becomes more important to you than it once used to. With ‘passion,’ we mean something more than an interest or a hobby, though it may well begin as one or the other. When you are ready to shape your life for, and be shaped by your chosen passion, this passion now possesses enough substance to continue its development and growth both as an major personal component of your life and as an ability to be honed and mastered.
Sometimes you come across the odd house that seems impossibly intact and upright — held together entirely, as it were, by the homeowner’s hopes and dreams — and you wonder how long it would continue to exist. Probably not long: it may well not be worth fixing up either.
I used to approach ideas and dreams somewhat like how such houses might have been built: “Let me build what I want now, and we could worry about the foundations and structural integrity later.” The only step of the building process where this thinking makes sense is in the brainstorming, early-stages of designing — not in actual building. (Yes, I have learned (and am still learning) this lesson the hard way.)
Similarly, if all you bring to the table are ideas and dreams, maybe even with a strong desire behind them, you are only spinning your wheels in a continuous designing stage if your dreams are without substance. Or worse — you finish a house that cannot stand at all, and results in both destruction and waste.
Passion requires substance. If you could discover and acquire the one alongside the other, great. If that does not happen, try not to do things backwards — keep the fire alive without letting it burn itself or the things around it to ashes.
*To be refined and developed further though more learning and living.