Everyone, whoever they are, says that finding your passion is the key to enjoying a fulfilled and peaceful life.  Finding your passion, apparently, can even bring you spiritual fulfillment.  I’ve been mulling that about.  As a widow, a mom, and a full-time writer, I don’t have a lot of spare time.  Finding my passion?  Perhaps I should make my passion sleep!  The reality is that I have to stay organized beyond the capability of a drill sergeant in order to keep my life, and my kid’s lives, going forward, rather than stalling or worse yet, going backwards.

I think, upon mulling this around while I went down and changed the laundry loads around, that passions are perhaps not well defined in our lives.  Passion is NOT the cover of a romance novel; although that wouldn’t hurt every so often.  Passion ARE the driving forces of our lives.

Notice I put that in the plural.  Passions can come in several categories:

• Relationships
• Careers
• Hobbies
• Our Secret Dreams

This all reminds me of what my late husband used to say.  He believed that if you kept your priorities straight, everything in life would just “work out.”  He was right. 

1. He said first you keep your relationship with God right.  Without your belief in whatever you believe in, the foundation is shaky and everything falls apart.
2. The second priority was your marriage.  After your relationship with God, he felt nothing was more important than the love between a husband and wife.
3. Your children.  That pretty much speaks for itself.  If you have children, then they are your passion whether you realize it or not.
4. Careers was his third choice although he vacilated between this one and the next one.  He felt that if you spent so much of your life, as we do at work, and hated it, it would be a miserable experience for everyone.  He was right.  He made a career change because of it and he was a much happier man.
5. Extended family was his fourth choice (or sometimes third - depending on the day).  That would be an adult’s siblings, grandchildren and other family members.  He often saw that people put extended family above their own children and marriage and the results were always disasterous.
6. Hobbies were his final choice and that included what he would have considered his passions.  Whether it is woodworking, auto-racing, gardening… these are last, but they are no less of a passion.

So this is the Floyd-Driven List of Passions and Priorities.  I agree with him.  I like the order and I have seen it in action.  And I try to continue that as my plumb line for living today without him here. 

But I have found another passion.  One perhaps he didn’t think about, or maybe is exclusive to women.  After all men are from Mars…

Your Secret Dreams.  Don’t lump them in with hobbies.  Make them a top priority after the kids go to bed, the hubby is reading or sleeping, the family is quiet… just don’t set them aside.  If you want to write a book, do it.  Get out a notebook or a word processor and do it.  If you want to dance, take a class, or wait for everyone to leave the house and “dance like nobody is watching.”  Or if you want to do what I am doing, learn to play the violin.  I am determined to not die without playing my violin and playing it fairly well.

Either way I win on that one.  I’ll either live forever and have time to do all the other things I want to do, or I will die knowing the violin and I became one and I learned to make it sing.  My Secret Dream.

Adelle Tilton