These days I am constantly lecturing at my sibling to find her passion, yet I realize at the same time that this search can be long and enduring.
It’s also the goal of many parents that enrolls their children among numerous classes on the weekends in hope that they can find something that’s enjoyable for them to do.
Thinking back I acknowledge the hard work my parents put into my childhood years in different hobbies like piano, art, and musical instruments.
In the recent days there are lot of information out there about ‘growing’ your passion instead of ‘finding’ your passion which reminds me of a quote:
“Do what you love and love what you do.”
Something that you love doing not only makes your moments memorable. But also makes each day filled with a purpose to wake up for. Something to expect with excitement throughout the day.
Yesterday I watched a ted talk that really connected with this idea of purpose and passion:
The speaker talked about ‘flow’ a renown concept amongst athletes and musicians about these small moments when they lost the sense of ‘self’ and the consciousness in absolute concentration on achieving their goal.
What more I found fascinating was not only what requires for getting into ‘flow’, there was an interesting idea of bring this enjoyment into daily work.
Whether we like it or not, a large part of our mundane lives are concentrated in the doing of some kind of toiling.
So what if there’s way to find the same joy in our hobbies and bring it to brighten the daily activities that requires of us.
While I was researching into this topic I stumbled upon a video that provided me a powerful insight:
Could it be possible that to bring my mind into the flow state requires no direction of purpose and instead to simply let my mind wander like a streaming water?
But this also wouldn’t had made any sense because it goes against the natural state of the mind.
For example, when I started meditating to my breathing in the beginning even 5 minute seemed impossibly long, not even that because even 1 minute had been like an eternity to my unpracticed mind.
Thoughts would come to me that disturbs the inner silence no matter how much I ‘try’ to block them away.
However, I didn’t give give up on this journey and instead continued like a farmer trying to tame an impatient cow that moves all over the place.
Even today there’s lapses where my thoughts direct me away from my breathing.
Though there’s a huge improvement as I notice after that I had entered a type of meditative flow state.
In the beginning my purpose was only to focus on my breathing, as I meditate for a period of time I lose sense of time and self.
All my concentration was placed on my breathing and in those moments I became one with the breathing and there was no ‘self’.
Added to this boiling mix of ideas was the talk from Diane Allen that made me realize that what drove me to loving meditation so much was the sense of ‘unity’ I get from doing it.
Maybe from the start that was my purpose to simply focus on the breathing yet the purpose got lost towards the end when there was simply the calming effect of serenity.
The same thing also happens when I working my way to higher levels with weights at home.
As I can feelmy muscles tensing up from the pulls and stretches of each rep of the dumbbells.
It’s strange every time I reach the intended goal that I set out in the beginning even though amidst all the action my mind was only single-pointed on the ‘unity’ between the weights I’m lifting and the reaction from my body.
Moreover, not only does working out also brings me to a sense of ‘flow’ it could also be found in music when the ‘self’ is lost as my consciousness becomes one with the beauty of each note that I touch on the piano.
So passion is not something to really search for that’s out there in the wilderness of the strange and unknown world.
Instead it is in some really strange places and times in our daily lives when we are not expecting its arrival.
The limits of the human mind and body cannot be understood and I’m lost as I was when I start writing this.
And somehow the words of my story came out by itself despite my purpose to be simply ‘sharing a message to the world’.
Thanks for reading this and how you can also discover the strangeness of the ‘flow’ state in your daily activities.
