Caring for buds that can blossom- the art of sustainable well-being of life
“The first flower that blossomed on this earth was an invitation to an unborn song.” (Tagore)
The proverb goes “Man proposes but god disposes”. Maybe your parents or your well-wishers may want to see you as per their dream garnished with emotion and anticipation. But in reality, all their hopes turn into the grey of Tundra. I know one couple who wanted to see their son become a doctor but in reality, he became a good musician with several feathers in his crown. You might have heard about the icon of all the scientists to date, Charles Darwin. His family wanted to see him as brilliance in the medical profession but in reality; he has become the scientist of scientists of all time. The great naturalist of the 17th century, Linnaeus got admission to medical school but turned into the father of binomial nomenclature of the biological world. As a passion, you unknowingly took part in the practice of piano but now you have turned into the maestro of this magical musical instrument. Jeff Bezos, the icon of e-commerce, Julia Child, A celebrity Chef, Terry Crews, a notable comedian, Martha Stewart, an icon of Martha Stewart Living Omni media and many more who have turned their passion into a profession. More examples can induce your bad endocrine secretion to rule out this episode. Let us come to this context. The untold thoughts of plants, animals and human beings can be the recipe of your manure to rear the seldom-spoken inner beauty of urge. Exactly, I am talking about the passion. Passion means extreme interest in or wish to do something. It is just like the bud that can blossom to give colour and fragrance to your life. It is defined as a strong inclination toward a self-defining activity that people like or find important with the investment of time and energy regularly. Happiness, life satisfaction and self-growth convey the messages of psychological well-being and this well-being plays a paramount role in physical health as well as better relationships to a high level of performance to a greater extent. The happiness-related activities especially intentional activities facilitate psychological well-being. Passion is one of such activities that can be accounted for in this regard. Passion generally engages people several hours a week and the positive effects can bring them relief to facilitate well-being. Several thinkers have their positive opinion in this regard like Descartes (1596–1650) and Hegel (1770–1831). As per the nature of passion, it can be divided into two main categories- Harmonious and obsessive and it is collectively known as the Duel Mode of Passion (DMP). The first one i.e. harmonious one originates from an autonomous internalization of the activity into one’s identity while the Obsessive passion emanates from a controlled internalization and comes to control the person. It is just the relation of the fire with man. Fire when becomes a servant, can cook food but if fire makes the user a servant, it can burn the master. The passion can be categorically designed just like a fire. In harmonious, passion is a servant while in obsessive, passion becomes a master to make the use as slave. Through the experience of harmonious passion, the positive emotions are discharged on a regular and repeated basis and it can contribute to sustained psychological well-being while preventing the experience of negative effects, psychological conflict may cause ill-being. The different types of positive emotions like joy, pride, and excitement can contribute to the psychological well-being of the individual. Thus, over time, harmonious passion can facilitate sustainable increases in positive well-being and it prevents ill-being on the other hand. But if it becomes obsessive, it normally does not bring any psychological gains and even it becomes a boomerang to the practitioners with deleterious effects. So, it can be no exaggeration to say that all intentional activities cannot produce any remarkable positive effects on desired psychological well-being. You may suffer from a hectic schedule being a part of the professional engagement, but if you nourish your passion for song, music, outreach to the countryside or anything else even mere engagement with reading a good number of titles of contemporary issues or the epics of life, basically you are watering your weeds of passion to bloom with dense canopy comprising of love, merriment, joy, pleasure, happiness and other intangible outcomes in your branches of the shrubs of passion. Even, nobody can say, that your shrubs of passion may be transformed into the tree of professional engagement in the due course provided you do not suffer from any kind of obsession in this regard. Who does not know the names like Leonardo Da Vinci, Maya Angelou, Alexander Graham Bell, Nikola Tesla, Coco Chanel, Walt Disney, Serena Williams, Oprah Winfrey and absolutely Elon Musk? We generally consider our passion just to pass the time. Weeds are mostly unwanted plants in the productive ecosystem but the tangible value and imponderable potential of weeds can become the ray of the rainbow in our everyday hectic schedule. Maybe your passion can lead to the avenue of success if properly watered with a few manures of effort and innovation in the large portrait of life. I quote, “Turning your passion into a job is easier than finding a job that matches your passion”. What do you think? Let the passion be your art of your sustainable well-being of life in the true sense.
