Are You Passionate?

You might remember this was the title of a Neil Young album that didn’t really go anywhere other than the song “Let’s Roll” which he wrote about the 9/11 heroes on the jet that crashed in PA. What a great title song, too. Funny, I have never done anything I wasn’t passionate about. Perhaps that explains some long droughts of activity in areas of my life. Upon reflection, I realized when I was less visibly active, I was actually more active in thinking about what was important and what I might do next. Then I put the gears in motion and move forward.

I encourage you to create some time for yourself and take a look back over a period of your life. An Indigo Girls song includes the line, “Every 5 years or so I take a look back on my life and have a big laugh.” That’s probably really good advice for all of us. When I do this and think about the dreams, desires and people in my life, it's hard not to chuckle. 

One of the things I am most passionate about are other passionate people. In 2008 I decided to leave the workforce for a mid-career sabbatical. I was acutely aware I was leaving a company and people that had been good to me, providing me a launching pad for a career in building businesses. I must have watched the movie "Riding Giants” more than a dozen times as I was deciding what to do. Surfers in that movie span generations. It is easy to focus on Laird Hamilton as he is perhaps the planet’s greatest big wave surfer but I was interested in Jerry Lopez, Greg Noll, Mickey Munoz and Laird’s stepdad Bill Hamilton…these were guys I remember as a kid and all these years later, they are still doing it. That is passion. Neil Young winning a Grammy for Best Rock Song in 2011 for “Angry World” is passionate (he was 65 years old at the time). 

For me, my mid-career break was anything but what I had hoped and planned for.  The Great Recession reared its ugly head and our financial freedom became exposed to a level of risk I had never experienced before. Then one warm summer day my beautiful and wonderful sister told me she had cancer. A rare and vicious cancer called CUP or Cancer of the Unknown Primary. This disease would change many of our lives forever. For the next year a team of us met at 10AM daily and worked the phones, called on contacts and scanned the Internet to find someone who might be able to help. We made it to the top of Sloan Kettering and MD Anderson, met doctors with new and radical treatments as well as victims of various forms of cancer.  In the end, the cancer robbed my sister of the rest of her life and created a void in our lives that will never be filled. I did get to spend a lot of time with her which was rare because she had lived all over the world. Needless to say, we talked a lot! Thinking back on it now, I realize that in one year I had both found my heart and lost it. 

Not long ago, I saw Nancy Reagan being interviewed about her husband Ronald’s death. She said she missed him and that many had told her that her pain would pass over time. She respectfully said, “I am sorry but for me it still hurts”. Ronald Reagan died in 2004. I understand Mrs. Regan’s comment and share her pain. At the end of the day, it just does not get any better.

What you can do over time though is learn to endure.

I returned to the workforce and found I was more effective than I had ever been before.  A new appreciation for what “life, love and work” mean having provided me with a new way forward.  I am five years into the rest of my career now and on my second company. I talk frequently about slowing down or hanging it up in the next five years but every time I say that, it feels hollow. I am simply too passionate about what I do, like the surfers and musicians I am so fond of. It is likely a good bet that I will work until the day I die. 

Have principals and follow them without hesitation. Combine these with the love of those around you and what you do, and it will ensure success. 

My best, Chris