It is so important that you enjoy what you do in life. Our days are numbered from the day we are born, so why would anyone want to spend their waking hours doing something they do not enjoy. I've been thinking a lot about this over the past month. This month my husband had surgery for his bladder cancer and was in the hospital for nine days. He was home for about a week and then due to complications was back in the hospital for another nine days. During that time, I not only had a lot of time to think, but also time to reflect.
During both hospital stays and at his prior doctors appointments I could not help but notice the passion his surgeons possessed for their professions. Both Dr.Shawn McGee and Dr. Kurt Martinson are outstanding in their fields of surgery and urology. Both of these men have a passion for what they do and it is evident in the manner in which they deal with their patients. I was impressed whenever they came in to talk to us or when they checked in with me after the surgeries. They spoke directly to us, in terms that we could understand and spoke the truth, never trying to sugar coat anything. Also, when in the hospital, they would sit on the bed or couch so they were at our level, talking directly to us, not standing above us talking down to us. Prior to the surgeries when we met in their offices and when we talked with them at the hospital, they were very explicit in describing what was going to happen or what they discovered in the surgeries. It was also very evident that they really care about their patients. For those reasons, I know they have an enormous amount of passion for what they do as evidenced in the high level of care they give their patients.
I myself understand having passion for what you do. I had gone to Business College after high school for legal secretary. I worked later in bookkeeping and knew it was not my true calling. I enjoyed the math aspect, but knew I was destined for something else, or in other words, I was not passionate about my job. I did go back to school to become a teacher, and there laid my passion. I worked in schools and with children that had problems, either in learning or in their home life. Here I found where my true passion for education existed. I found I loved helping those children that had not had been successful in school and seeing them gain confidence as they found they could achieve the goals set for them and by having someone else believe in them, they began to believe in themselves.
I have also watched many people that deal with children as I personally assessed their passion for what they do. The first one that really sticks out was a director of the Children's Symphony in LaSalle, Illinois. My daughter Jennifer played the flute and had tried out for the symphony and made it. I would sit at her rehearsals and watch the director. It was so clear that something was missing. I never doubted that he was skilled at what he did, he just never looked like he was enjoying it. The manner in which he communicated with these children made that very evident. He spoke harshly to them and never looked like he was really enjoying what he did. I had wondered if he had a true passion for what he was doing, what he would of been able to achieve with these young musicians.
Another example of this is with my granddaughter Emma. She is a beautiful young lady and very skilled at dancing. She's been dancing since she was five. She has had two different dance instructors and through my observations of them I have definitely noticed the difference in the two instructors. It is nothing to do with skill, as I believe they both are very skilled. It all has to do with passion for what you are doing. I have spent many hours watching both of them teach their dance classes. One of them has so much passion for what she does that it almost seems to spill over onto the dancers she is teaching. She actually looks like she is having fun when she is teaching her young dancers. She has passion for what she does and she gets so much out of her dancers.
This takes me back to one of my favorite teachers in junior high and high school. That teacher was Mr. Zenner, my math teacher. I remember him at the chalk board doing everything he possibly could until every student in his math class understood the concept he was teaching. I so enjoyed my math classes in junior high because of him. He made math fun and easy. I was very lucky in senior high that he transferred to the upper grades and I could once again take classes from him. He had a deep passion for math and for teaching it to his young students.
So, whatever you do or are doing in life, I truly hope you have a passion for it. If not, then maybe you should take a deep look at your life. Life is a precious gift we are given and I feel that it should be spent doing only the things that make us happy, make us feel complete and give us the greatest satisfaction. If you are doing what you have a strong passion for, my wish for you is that it continues to fill your bucket with great satisfaction. If you no longer have a passion for what you are doing, them my wish for you is to try and find it again or to find something that will fulfill your passion.
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