Passions

I want to dedicate a moment of my time and a space in the interweb to focusing on passion.  I absolutely love passion, I love seeing it in other people and I love experiencing it. This is something essential for natural healing, because in my opinion  when you lose your passion, you lose your well-being and a part of what makes you, you.

Passion is when you put more energy into something than is required to do it. It is more than just enthusiasm or excitement, passion is ambition that is materialized into action to put as much heart, mind body and soul into something as is possible. -urban dictionary

Climbing is more than the energy I've invested, it is my life.  It, without a doubt,  drives my everyday actions and planning for the future.  It is one thing I can put my heart, body and soul into without fear of getting hurt.  I have had my heart broken, been denied dream jobs, suffered the betrayal of friends, and experienced the loneliest of the lonely nights.  Every morning when I wake up, I know that climbing will be there for me and calms my mind.  Planning for the weekend gets me through school.  It is actually why I am in school.  The friendships I make and people I meet is the icing on the cake.  I would not love climbing as much as I do if it weren't for all the awesome people who share their love of the activity with me.

There are the "do-ers" and the "react-ers", passionate people are the do-ers. Passionate people make change in the world and their lives.  If it weren't for passion's nothing would happen, our lives and world would be dull.  We would all be walking around lolly-gaging and smelling the flowers (not that theres anything wrong with that).  

Passions are used for positive change and negative change.  Martin Luther King, Jr, Albert Einstein, Lynn Hill, etc.  are examples the positive changers.  Adolf Hitler, Charles Manson, Hutus and the Tutsi extremist  etc. were all using their passions and ideas for evil.  Passions can break up marriages and families, create authoritarian dictatorships, be used as an excuse to step on the backs of other people, create greed, obesity, and a whole host of other things.  So, I guess the moral of this paragraph, is to be sure to use your passion for positive change, not to use or abuse others in the name of your passion and not to forget the bigger picture.

Whether it be a positive influence or negative one, one cannot live without discovering and tapping into their passion.

The passions are the only orators which always persuade. 
Francois de La Rochefoucauld 

Here I am on The Broach at Ship Rock outside of Boone, NC.  I am preforming the secret to climbing in the southeast, where anyone who is a hard climber, climbs with their tongue out : )