Apassionato

Apassionato is the past participle of a Latin word that means “to impassion”. It is found in the music sheets, where the composer wants to interpret a passage with passion. It should have been tattooed on our palms as we were handed to the stork for delivery. Then we would have been saved from vacillating between deadening dullness and paralyzing panic, from the trouble of learning on our own that life without passion is like salad without dressing – safe, healthy, not fattening, and unspeakably drab.

Passion comes from the Latin word for “suffering”, hence the Passion of the Christ. It implies suffering for a deemed noble: Christ believed in His divine mission and carried it trough to an extremely uncomfortable death. We see that passion transcends the physical and, contrary to common perception, is neither totally mindless nor totally blind. We determine our reason how we want to live and recognize the companion pieces of our choice – the possible grief, the potential rewards, our trade-offs. When desire smothers diffidence, when we opt for paths less travelled, corners less explored, then we live life with passion.

Analyzing passion is like defining love. We teeter dangerously on the brink of mawkishness. Groping with imagery, I find myself thinking of love as a cup of warm chocolate and passion as hot, strong, almost thick coffee. Chocolate soothes, comforts, and is sweet. Coffee unleashes energy, has full-bodied flavour, a touch of bitterness unpleasant to others, but delicious to the drinker.

Love is softness: passion is smoulder. Love might be contentment but passion is adventure. It must be free, untethered. It must explore, drive beyond boundaries, break moulds. Passion discovers, unearths, examines, magnifies, revels in details. Love rolls up details into a coherent whole. Love is passion hyperactive. Where love is melancholic, passion is pain.

Love and passion is inseparable. Extreme desire for another person’s body without awe of that person’s soul is lust. But when the desire for another body proceeds from a need to connect with that body’s cherished uniqueness, its soul, then the desire becomes passion. Lust quickly disappears. Passion is insatiable.
I asked a friend to recall a lustful encounter. She quickly described the mechanics of that episode – how they met, where they went, how they meshed, how quickly the storm passed. I then inquired about a man with whom I knew she had had a passionate connection. “He turned my blood to smoke,” she said, staring into a distance, and though it had been many years, I knew she remembered in her gut what it had felt to be with him.

Passion is visceral. It stands outside traditional thinking. It ignores conventions like distance, time, social acceptance. It dares into uncharted waters. It used to be primarily associated with romantic love. Today, thanks to authors like Tom Peters and Nancy Austin (A Passion for Excellence), passion’s boundaries have been extended to embrace work, entrepreneurial endeavours, corporate success.
And why not? Work should be a passion. I abandon myself to my career as I would to a lover. I take professional and personal risks. When I win, I soar. Other times I hit the pavement with a resounding thud. In between I do battle with indifference. I have been, for the most part, successful; not because I am the best but because I do my best and that for me is passionate, fulfilling life.

If passion is so good then why do many fear it? Because by its etymology (from the Latin word passus, past participle of pati meaning to suffer) it brings pain. To be capable of passion one must be open, vulnerable and brave enough to stare pain in the eye. It is safer, easier to be closed, unfeeling, unhurt.
Also, passion picked up an unsavoury reputation along the centuries. A murder committed by a person who found his/her beloved in the arms of another was labelled “a crime of passion”; encouraging many to shun “passion” when they should have avoided “crime”. If instead the killing had been called “a crime of murderous temper”, then perhaps more people could have surrendered to passion.

I believe that life lived with passion shimmers, shines, rises above ordinary. Allow me to seduce you into a passionate existence. To think, to laugh, to sing, maybe even to sigh – appassionato.
-anonymous