Passion is a truly misaligned word. Maybe understandably so. I mean, it's possible to be passionate in a good way (when playing a piano, when acting in a stage drama, when confessing your love to someone), but there're also bad times to be passionate (when assessing a crisis, when speaking on the phone to your bank, when trying to get bumped up to first class), and so I suppose it makes sense that you either love or hate passion. It's really not something to feel meh about, is it now?
Recently, a friend sent me a link to a blog he kept while courting his future wife, their marriage, the difficult process of trying to get pregnant, pregnancy, and then becoming a dad. He sent me a link for several reasons. Dads love reading about dads, we're old friends, and the whole thing was tied in coincidence linking the birth of one of my kids to his meeting his future wife. (I love that sort of thing. Remind me I need a blog on "On Coincidence.")
When he sent me the link, he reminded me to go easy on him because he's "not a writer." Well, not to get too semantic on it, but isn't he? He wrote something, does this not make him a writer. True, he may not have had the flourish and the flare of someone who crafts prose for a living, but he had the sharp, meaningful language of the convicted.
It had a passion, and it was beautiful. It was written, as they say, from the heart and I found it wrenching and tugging and felt. It was wonderful.
Writing well matters, but writing something potent like that matters that much more.
