Enthusiasm or Passion? Choose Passion.

“In fact, it had been observed by some, that the Hobbits’ only passion was food; a rather unfair observation as we have also developed a keen interest in the brewing of ales.” – Fellowship of the Ring

Why don’t they teach sailors how to swim?  So they will defend the ship with more enthusiasm.

I hate enthusiasm.  I really do.

Enthusiasm is motivational posters.  Enthusiasm is a group of cheerleaders chanting out “H-U-S-T-L-E, hustle, hustle for victory!” when the football team is down by 25 points in the fourth quarter.  It’s pretending to be excited in a job interview.

Enthusiasm has always been a bit (as the kids today would say) cringe to me.  It really does make the skin crawl on my spine when I think about the mindless enthusiasm that I see in the world.

Why?

Because it’s generally fake.  It’s not based in any sort of reality – it’s a series of mindless platitudes that don’t mean anything or show any true or real commitment.  Enthusiasm is what I see from political candidates when they’re at their most smarmy and useless.  Oh, wait, that’s every day for them.

Like I said, I hate enthusiasm.

But I love passion.

Cattle don’t cheer, but I heard that they give encowregment.

Passion is real, it’s deep, and it’s not at all afraid of Truth.  Passion is the part of you that keeps you playing in that football game when you’re down by 25 points in the fourth quarter.  Passion is the fire inside of you.

When I was in high school, every year the wrestling coach would have a parents’ meeting at the start of the season.  As a part of the meeting, he’d have a demonstration match between two of his wrestlers.  I was lucky enough to appear in the two of those matches, one held my junior year and one held my senior year.  I think he did it to get the parents excited about the season.

In my junior year, I was wrestling a senior that was stronger and better than me – my only claim to fame was that I outweighed him by 15 or so pounds.  When we started the match, he slipped on a throw and ended up on his back – I got the takedown plus two back points before he reversed me.  He won the match 5-4.

It was the best I ever wrestled against him.

I’ve never met The Rock, but I heard he was shy.  I guess I would have expected him to be a Little Boulder.

The next year I was the senior wrestling a junior who outweighed me by about 35 pounds.  Right before the match, he said to me, “Wilder, please don’t pin me in front of everyone.”

My response?  “Jimmy, if I can pin you, I will.  This is wrestling.”

There was, in my mind, no half-measure in a wrestling match.  To go easy on someone stepping out on to the mat would, in my mind, then and now, be cheating.  I was passionate about wrestling, and the mat was sacred to me – you’re out there just you and another man, going toe to toe, and every second you spend on the mat in a real match you give it everything you have.

That, in my mind, is passion, though you might just say, “Wilder’s just a tool” and you wouldn’t be wrong.  But to not pin Jimmy if I could, well, that would be cheating the sport.  It wasn’t personal, it was the simple principle that every time, every single time I went on the mat it was deadly serious to me – I gave every single bit of myself.  To do less than I could?  That would be a lie.

I asked for no quarter, and I gave no quarter.  Jimmy was still my friend afterwards,

I bought a tie for my dog to wear on our walks.  He looks sharp when he does his business.

I think passion is like that.  It’s a drive from the core of your being – it’s not about trying to be something, it’s who you are.  Passion alone is an amazing thing, and allows peak performance.

The other variable is talent.  Just by my body’s geometry I’m unsuited to some sports.  Long distance running?  Probably not with these short Viking legs and long Norse torso.  Lifting very heavy things?

That’s more like it.

Talent is also unfairly distributed.  I’ve seen people who have zero talent for something throw their entire lives, passionately into an activity.  Ma Wilder was passionate about art.  And, I still have some of the landscapes she did as oil paintings.  When it came to landscapes, she had a gift.

But when it came to people?  Ma was Modern Museum of Bad Art bad at drawing people.

The one on the right looks like the clues I get in Pictionary®.

Add talent to passion?

That’s where “world class” comes in to existence, because passion is the only thing that can keep a man driving himself to his limit day after day.  The best concert violinists practice more than the average ones, not less.  Their talent plus passion is what creates that world class performance.  Talent alone?  You get a collection of people that all fall into the “could have been” category, gifted people who didn’t have the passion to turn that gift into world class performance.

Working hard, day after day, year after year, is what it takes to be great at anything.  Raw talent isn’t enough.

Fake enthusiasm?  No thanks.  It’s time to get passionate and angry about something.

Me?  I’m starting with raisins.  Man, they piss me off.

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

18 thoughts on “Enthusiasm or Passion? Choose Passion.”

    3. I’ve been down this path, beaten this horse, and picked on this scab a time or two, so you may have heard me rail against or at least muse about this issue (or set of issues) before. My blog on White Guilt fully outlines (how’s that for an oxymoron?) the concept, but in short, white Guilt is the result of the perpetual victimization of black people and white people’s shame, and horror . . . Guilt being manipulated by both black and white leaders in our society, in our government, and in our press. I’ve long thought this white guilt was the reason that Barack Obama wasn’t held to the same standards as other presidential candidates, and now, I feel vindicated in that belief. Because “Barack” woulnt do anything wrong!

      Obama gives a good, albeit empty speech; he’s a great public speaker, no doubt in my mind about that. But I’ve never quite “got” what the whole “Change we can believe in” thing was about. Change from what (bad George Bush) to what (good Barack Obama)? Don’t forget, Barack won’t do anything wrong. Well, isn’t that what every candidate intends . . . to replace and improve upon the works of the sitting president? Isn’t that why they run? Vague until last week’s DNC about specific changes, Obama now promises every American a college education, health care, job stability, and a puppy. Okay, every politician promises that. How’s he going to pay for it? Something, I hesitate to call it fuzzy math, to do with the budget; he’s not clear on that tiny detail.

      He’s for the environment, so we know he wants us to go greener, but everyone is “for” the environment these days; how’s he stand out? By saying we shouldn’t drill off our shores. And then saying, well, maybe we should in a limited capacity (this only after polls showed that people want us to be oil independent and his charm wasn’t making them budge on that point). He said that he was against the war in Iraq and (according to him) always had been; indeed, he says, had he been in the Senate at the time, which he wasn’t so we can’t know how he would have voted if presented with all the evidence and arguments at that time, he would have voted against it. He condemns anyone and everyone who voted for it. Well, everyone except his VP running mate, Joe Biden who voted as Hillary Clinton did, indeed as many of people on the left did. But hey, that’s okay, it’s Barack, and “Barack” don’t do anything wrong!.

  2. The word “passion” come from the Greek word for “suffering”.

    “Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.” “No plan survives first contact with the enemy”.

    Everybody has enthusiasm until the going gets rough.

    After that, passion is a requirement to keep on going.

  3. “I hate grapes! I can’t stand grapes! I loathe grapes! All kinds of grapes! I hate purple grapes! I hate green grapes! I hate grapes with seeds! I hate grapes without seeds! I hate them peeled and non-peeled! I hate grapes in bunches, one at a time, or in groups of twos and threes! I f*cking hate grapes!” – Joe, Psychos In Love

  5. Enthusiasm is certainly overrated. I recall “pep rallies” from high school days at which student volunteers were herded like the cats that they are and ordered to cheer on command for the photographers. What were they cheering for? Usually some distinctly backwater, nondescript little hamlet whose high school couldn’t win a football game even if spotted 68 points.

    My son’s former bubbleheaded girlfriend learned a very valuable lesson within a minute of our introduction, when I met her overwrought, squeaky glee for making my acquaintance with the stop hand and a deliberately dour, “Pull the ripcord, Sweetcheeks. I don’t do ‘perky’.”

    But passion, judiciously directed and applied, can indeed yield miracles. The NASA space program of the 1960s leaps irresistibly to mind. Those skinny-tie proto-nerds gave their life, their love and their chastity to sending a handful of suicidally-inclined daredevils to the moon and back in a tin can, using nothing more sophisticated than spit, grit and duct tape. And not even that newfangled fluorescent colored tape, either.

    Bottle that sh!t and you can sell it like Red Bull.

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