Levoy - Vital signs: the nature and nurture of passion

Chase down your passion like its the last bus of the night.

TERRI GUILLEMETS

I USED TO BE a reporter for the Cincinnati Enquirer, back in my twenties, and among my favorite stories was one I wrote about the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus coming to town.

In a fit of journalistic zeal, howeverand therefore shortsightednessI let one of the animal trainers convince me that riding bareback on an elephant at the head of the circus parade through downtown Cincinnati would add color to my story.

Contrary to my jungle-book fantasy of being airlifted onto the elephants back while standing on its trunk, the only way to actually get up there was to use a ladder, and the only way to stay up there during the parade was to hang on to the elephants ears.

Those whove ridden elephants bareback probably know about this already, but elephant ears have an extremely disagreeable habit of flapping a lot, especially when theyre hot. And it was high summer. So the only way to stay up there was to remain extremely flappable, otherwise Id have been thrown, and it was probably ten to fifteen feet to the grounda concern that, to be honest, paled in comparison with my concern about how stupid I looked up there, desperately hanging on to this animals buffeting ears, wearing my business clothes, because the animal trainer had sprung this brilliant idea on me right before the parade, and with my pants scrunched up above my knees.

I was the first thing anybody saw in that parade, and Im fairly certain I did not capture the theme of The Greatest Show on Earth.

But in looking back on my elephant ride, and on what Ive learned since then about whats involved in living passionately and courageously, that experience had a lot in common with the experience of following passionsin that I was caught by surprise and carried off by something much bigger than me; in that it was nerve-racking and thrilling simultaneously; and in that the elephant couldnt have cared less. By which I mean that Ive discovered an unsettling truth: my soul doesnt seem to care what price I have to pay to live passionately.

This seems like a design flaw to me. But my security, my popularity, my vanity, even my happiness dont seem to matter to my soul. Its not interested in whether I live a comfortable life. Its not interested in making me rich or famous. Its not interested in whether people even like me or not. What does seem to matter to it, though, is staying up on the elephant and being willing to go for the Ridethe one that ensures that someday if my life flashes in front of my eyes, it will at least hold my interest.

PASSION IS WHAT DISTURBS and confounds the safe and settled in your life, the tendency to try to lock yourself into geosynchronous orbit around some form of security, no amount of which will ever adequately compensate you for giving up your passions or selling your soul, though it may allow you to suffer in nicer surroundings.

Passion is the impulse toward growth, which, by its nature, protests boredom and ennui, refuses to bump mindlessly along on the conveyor belt, and has little patience for the been there, done that attitude that theres nothing new under the sun. Its what stirs your interest in life, helping you awaken from the trances and entrapments of the everyday, which block the natural migration of your energies.

Whether passion takes the form of colorful intensity or contemplative alertness, it contributes to a vibrant life, a keen awareness of where the pulse is, and a determination to plug into that place. It helps you stay engaged with the world and enjoy it as a function of the primary calling of all creaturesmaximum aliveness.

In fact, passion is a survival mechanism, because your attachment to life depends on your interest in it, your sense of wonder and reverence, enthusiasm and gratitude, participation. It also depends on your ability to resist the torpor of dailiness, with its hypnotic routines and its soothing illusion that theres always tomorrowa lamp of Aladdin merely awaiting your caressand that you have plenty of time to make your dreams come true and your passions come alive, even though years may continue to slip by Rip Van Winklelike and you occasionally awaken with a growing uneasiness and a sense of being unrecognizable even to yourself.

Part of the reason so many people are fascinated nowadays with vampires and zombies is our collective fear of being sucked of our life force, drained of our vitalities, and left in a bloodless and catatonic state.

This fear may not be so much one of dying, or even being eaten alive, as much as one of being turned into a zombie. And most of us know, or have known, the experience of feeling like the living dead. Being at a job that, like a vampire, sucks the life out of you. School years spent staring zombielike into space and dreaming about the pleasures of the flesh or perhaps about freedom. Evenings spent clocking your statutory 4.8 hours of daily television. Being in a relationship in which you feel like a mere ghost of your full vital self. Long, dull stretches of life through which youve staggered like the walking dead. And most of us also know the fear of losing our minds and our identities that can come with simply growing old and suffering dementia. Given enough time, life itself devours our brains.