Your Passion For Traveling Is Bullshit

jtrain9 years ago

I went on Facebook and read about someone’s new business venture. The beginning of the lengthy post went like this, “Blank is a Blank-born entrepreneur with a long-standing passion for brunch.” Did you hear that sound around 5:15 p.m. on Tuesday? That was me audibly scoffing. Maybe you saw some birds flutter out of a tree and thought, “Was that a guy loudly climaxing?” No, it wasn’t. Rest assured, that sound was me being physically moved to disgust. What bothers me most about that post is the word “passion.” Does anyone even know the definition of that word? I’ll help you out, passion is a noun that means, “strong and barely controllable emotion.” After reading that definition, do you believe anyone actually has a passion for brunch? I have a feeling this person isn’t sitting up at night watching motivational speech videos on YouTube while she cries thinking about how far eggs benedict has come. I don’t think this person has their breath taken away when they see someone yell to the waiter, “We are going to get a side pancake order for the table.” I just don’t buy it. I don’t think this is their passion. I think they see an opportunity to make money off of something they like doing, and there’s nothing wrong with that. Just stop trying to make people believe that you have a higher calling for breakfast food at a later hour.

I see that word “passion” tossed around freely on social media and dating profiles. And it’s always about a lot of very normal things. They have a passion for cooking and food and veganism and breathing and walks and traveling. Do you have a passion for traveling? Or are you just like us regular people who like to not work? Because I know I like not working. I know I like being on a beach. I just didn’t know that there was someone else boarding the same flight who was being brought to an emotional climax thanks to leaving their home state.

And I know why people write it. The internet is too easy. We are all given a voice so we really have to make that voice count. We need our thing to stand out. So we add words like “passion,” and “love,” and post an article with a comment like, “THIS. If you read one thing today, IT’S THIS.” Um, no I will not read someone’s open letter to the clothing companies who make their medium t-shirts too small. I’m good. The best example is when someone writes a post about something in the news and precedes the opinion with, “I never post on here but…” As if this guy is some sort of Grand Poobah that’s been watching from the corner. Everyone quiet down! Father Earth is going to figure out the water crisis for us. The guy who can’t figure out “your” and “you’re” is gracing us with his opinion!

It’s not even the passion people that I care about. It’s the people with no passion. The one’s who don’t care and have no opinion. The one’s that read about someone’s passion for brunch and slunk down in their chairs wondering why they don’t care about anything never mind a weirdly timed meal. I am one of those people. I honestly don’t care about anything. In college I was probably less passionate than I am now. I didn’t have career goals. When someone told me about their major and the plan they had after college I’d do a cartoonishly long yawn and yell “Boooooring.” One time a recently graduated friend showed me his new business card and I took it, looked it over, then ate it. Yes, you read that correctly. I digested a business card (it came out easier than anything with Sriracha on it). And that wasn’t because I wasn’t happy for them, I just couldn’t understand how they were so sure about their life. Using words like, “passion” and “career” always seem to lock you down to a promise. A promise I can’t see anyone really keeping.

And that’s the thing I’ve learned most since entering the “real world.” It’s ok to not know. It’s ok to wait on announcing your passion. Because by the time you know what that passion is, you’ll be so busy doing it, there will be no time to post or tweet about it. It’ll be so ingrained that the only time you’ll realize that you’re actually pursuing something is when you stop buying that a girl who travels three times a year can call that her passion..