Passion – It is the Willingness to Suffer

We generally associate passion with intense love towards something or motivation to do something.

Our limbic brain is home to our emotions like love, hate and also our passion. But what is passion and what do we actually mean when we say we are passionate.

Turns out the word passion goes back to the Latin words ‘passio’ meaning ‘suffering’ or ‘enduring’ . This means when we are passionate about something, the object of our passion makes us suffer and make us go through pain. This also means when we are passionate about something, we are willing to go through the hardships and struggle in the process of attaining it.

For example, when someone is passionate about educating poor children, they initially go through a lot of hurdles, doubts, worries. They struggle to keep going in spite of lack of resources and lack of perspective of how it is going to work out. Yet they continue to pursue it relentlessly sustaining the stress and suffering in this process.

~Praveen Jada

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