What is life without passion?
by Melody Thomas

What drives the public’s fascination for certain themes, stories, movies, works of art? I’m not just talking about literature that we were all told to read in high school because someone else found inspiration in its meaning, or works of art we were told were great but could not figure out why.

In fact, we might have hated what someone else loved. Both are strong emotions. But to experience passion and to be passionate about something are different.

Passion is powerful. Passion can fuel our creativity. Being passionate about something is invoked by emotion. Passion is emotion.

What is passion exactly? And what is the difference between feeling passion and feeling passionate?

As most people know, the word "passion" originates from the Latin word "Passio" which means suffering. Barring the religious meaning, which goes back to early Latin translations of the bible, the modern day meaning for passion is believed by etymologists to come from the Greek word "Pathos", which means emotions marked by the "extreme or deep, powerful, sometimes excessive." Intense anger, lusts and desires, zeal, hence the term zealot. I read once that the first sexual usage for passion can be attributed to William Shakespeare.

So, when one is passionately in love, does that mean that love is inviting suffering, intense anger, and lusts? It’s true that feelings keenly felt are often painful. There is much truth to the term “love hurts”. But is that real love or merely passion?

I believe there is more truth that real love heals and creates and forgives. Perhaps real love itself is passion’s opposite. Something to ponder.

I do know that passion manifests itself from deep within a person. I would surmise that no artist, writer, musician, ever created anything without passion behind the work. But it’s the public’s passionate feelings about a particular artist’s works that immortalized the likes of Van Gogh, Mozart, Shakespeare, Jane Austen, and, in our century, authors like Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and Rosemary Rogers, who forever changed the publishing landscape.

Timeless movies like GONE WITH THE WIND, CASABLANCA, and yes, even STAR WARS have created an industry of passionate followers. All of us can name something that inspires or has inspired passion in us. Has someone or something inspired your passions? Do share.