The Passion Conversation, Continued

I discovered a few years ago the idea of cultivating a passion instead of finding it. The article on the Minimalists website explaining this idea brought validation to the struggle I felt so strongly in college to find something I was passionate about so I could be like my peers. During one lecture in college the speaker even asked, “What are you willing to lose sleep over?” as an exercise to determine what we get excited – or passionate – about. But the silent answer I came up with was that I’m not willing to lose sleep over anything because sleep is important. It’s important to live a balanced, healthy life.

And so my journey of personal growth developed over the years. I still love sleep every bit as much as I did in college, and I become vexed if I can’t have my sleep. As I have explored in many of my previous posts, I have many interests and many things I love to learn about. However, I only love to explore them if I can do so in a healthy way.

As I’ve grown, I’ve realized I do indeed have passion within my being, just not a traditional, 21st-century type passion. My passion is not for a particular career or cause, but for life itself.

When Self Awareness Is Really Rumination

Many have complimented me for my self awareness, my ability to understand my personal growth challenges and identify my weaknesses. However, what many do not understand is that not all of my musings are a result of self awareness, but rather rumination.

Like a cow chewing its cud, I regurgitate my thoughts and turn them over and over in my head. Unlike a cow, I can never seem to fully digest them. They keep coming back up to haunt me. While I have done this for almost as long as I can remember, some periods of time are worse than others. My obsessing over various topics has kept me awake at night, trapped me in bed in the morning, and made me late or absent to scheduled engagements. Sometimes I can distract myself long enough to be productive; sometimes I can’t.

In trying to dig to the root of my struggle, I think I may have begun doing this as a self-soothing tactic to remedy my loneliness. I know that my thoughts are not logical, so instead of communicating them to others, I allow them full reign in my head. I don’t really think of it as anxiety as much as a means of comfort, much like a child sucking on her thumb.

I have tried to process these thoughts with people I am close to, but what I have discovered is I reason them away. I may acknowledge that they are illogical feelings, and almost apologize for them to the people I talk to. In recent reflection, I realized I still talk to my friends about the same thoughts and feelings I was having a year ago. The obsession is relentless.

So what do I do with all that? I have tried reasoning my feelings away, because I am a huge fan of being a person of reason, but there is no reasoning with feelings, no matter how convincing the argument. I think what I crave more than anything is for someone to enter into the worry with me, to cry with me before helping to bring me out of it. To help me realize that my feelings, however illogical, are valid.

Exposed Soul

The summer is coming to an end, but it will still be awhile before cooler weather sets in. I remember last summer feeling like I was seeing a lot of posts about modesty, but this summer I don’t recall seeing as many.

This is not going to be another post on how women should/should not cover up; there are plenty of those on the internet. What this is about is some thoughts I have on clothing from a slightly different perspective.

I wish we could all walk around naked without being judged, but that is not socially or legally acceptable in 2015. But I wonder if our focus should be less on exposed skin and more on an exposed soul.

Let me explain. Any form of exposure requires a degree of vulnerability. Some people are completely comfortable showing skin, while others are more comfortable sharing personal stories or emotional experiences. Some are fine with both or neither. Could the two be related? Could it be that the more skin I expose, the less comfortable I feel revealing my soul? Or is it that the more I cover up, the more insecure I am about how people would react if they knew the true me?

Even in the famous story of Adam and Eve, the two of them walked around naked and were completely vulnerable in all aspects. After the Fall, they covered up, not only physically, but perhaps emotionally as well.

I tend to show more skin than many of my conservative friends may be comfortable with, so I am not going to shun you based on how much or how little you cover up. What interests me more is the core of a human being: who she really is beneath the masks of social constraints. What are you struggling with that you’re afraid to tell anyone? What are you covering up that is keeping you from being healthy? That is what matters to me.

My Thoughts on Facebook Fasting

Periodically I’ll see some of my Facebook friends announce that they are going on a Facebook fast: “Leaving Facebook for x days; text if you need to reach me.” While it sounds like a good idea, I have never officially done my own Facebook fast other than when I was traveling or at summer camp. I think a break from the internet can definitely be a good thing, both for the mind and the body, but I have some mixed thoughts about it as well.

Hearing about someone going on a Facebook fast sounds pretty similar to someone announcing they’re going on a diet. It’s short term and may have some benefits, but it takes discipline, it’s easy to give up on, and it probably won’t affect you much in the long term. I’m not a big fan of diets, but I am a fan of healthy living.

Personally I don’t do internet fasts because I want to be reachable if people need to contact me, especially if they want to schedule something last minute that I wouldn’t see if I were on a fast. A one-time internet fast isn’t likely to accomplish much (for me), but I do like the idea of trying to moderate how much time I spend on the internet on a regular basis. Maybe that means taking a day each week/month and not checking Facebook. More practically for me it means not checking my email constantly throughout the day.

Personal internet moderation is something I still need to work on – I still fall into the trap of sitting in front of my computer screen when I’m bored, or even when I should be doing other things. For some people, Facebook fasts are great. For me personally, I don’t want to go on a diet; I want to improve my lifestyle.