Where to?

I have been giving a lot of thought lately to a question you shouldn't really have to think about.

"What are you passionate about?"

You know in Knocked Up how Paul Rudd is watching his kids run around on the playground and he says, "I wish I liked anything as much as my kids like bubbles"? Well, that's not quite me, but I can almost relate. The strangest thing about it is that I'm about as positive and upbeat as they come. My cynicism only starts to rear it's ugly head when I'm thinking broadly about things that seem too broken to even begin to try and fix.

Being twenty-three years old and recently out of college, I fit the mold of your typical overwhelmed and unprepared real-world denizen. There's all this talk about opportunity and optimism with nothing tangible to attach that fleeting feeling to.

Your passions are intense, compelling feelings. It's something you love or hate. Just something you feel strongly about. Something you can't help but think about. It's not just your interests, it's what is in your heart.

I am passionate about the need for real social change. The need for people to try a little harder and treat each other well. Our behavior shows signs of unshakable compassion and despicable intolerance. I am passionate about the core of people I surround myself with. They are people that I love and respect and think the world of. I am passionate about faith and how it drives to our deepest moral values and our entire purpose. Wrestling with the mystery of human existence and what we're all doing here. I am passionate about music and it's power to connect. I am passionate about sports and their nature of unpredictability tied to sheer determination and work ethic. I am passionate about technology and how something so advanced is used to simplify.

I am passionate about the need for self-discovery and self-reliance. Really getting to know yourself and depend on your own abilities.

And none of this really makes me stand out. Most everyone aspires to bettering the world, loving those around them, and we all wrestle with our faith. We all listen to music and watch sports and try to get to know ourselves. We all have high expectations of ourselves, or at least the people that I know do. And none of us want to waste our time with something we aren't passionate about.

The realism and all of the overwhelming feelings hit hard when you try to go out and make something of yourself. It's difficult to spend your time helping others when you need to provide for yourself as well. So we our forced into the trap of a steady job that monopolizes our time. And I like my job. I like the people who I work with very much and I like the sense of accomplishment I feel when I finish a project. I honestly do. But it bothers me when I think about what I'm doing with, what, 40% of my time and I fear that in the end, these things may not matter.

This is what makes me want to explore. To go live in another city or another country and meet new people and get to know myself and to make a difference. And believe me, this feeling is far too insistent to ignore. But it's also difficult to toy with my own sense of security and comfort. It's really a matter of selfishness. But by going out and finding my place outside of what I know, I feel like I'll just be expanding that pool of knowledge. And now it's only a question of what. Where to?