Finding Passion
For someone who has been affected by addiction, finding passion can often be hard at first. My definition of passion is loving what I do and doing what I love; it’s about having that feeling in my gut that says I am doing what’s good for me. My passions are living life, loving America, and helping others find recovery. I found them by asking myself the question, “What do I love doing?” And it wasn’t until I found recovery that I seriously asked myself this question.
For me the scariest, most dreaded question before I got into recovery was this: WHAT DO I LOVE DOING? I answered this question a million times with, “I have NO idea, STOP ASKING, stop bugging me.”
Something changed for me when I got into treatment. I found this overwhelming desire not to be stuck in the world I had created, and I knew that world was not far behind me—so when I started asking myself what I was going to do to stay clean, my answer was passion. In treatment I found meditation. I found a group of people who loved me, and best of all I found my first passion: life. When I say life, I say it in the simplest terms: I love being awake, I love talking to people, I enjoy the sun and I like to work. These are not complicated things, but they are still great things to be passionate about.
My second passion is kind of silly, but I love America. I believe in the good ol’ USA; I believe in buying things made in the USA and US manufacturing; and I know that there is no better place to travel and see the sights than the USA.
My third passion and the one that hits closest to my heart is helping others find recovery. As a young person in recovery, it can be hard to find things to do. I am surely not always the funnest one in the crowd, but I am the one friends come to when they want to know more about the disease of addiction. I find that when I tell people that sobriety does not have to be boring, the young people in recovery get a smile on their faces. It’s the simple offer to get coffee at Starbucks or go bowling together that makes recovery fun.
Recovery has offered me many things; one of them is finding my passions. It was not until I got into recovery that I seriously took a look at my life and said, “What is it that I love and how am I going to stay clean?” Passions do not have to be complicated, they don’t have to be cool by someone else’s standards and they don’t have to be the next million dollar idea. What I do suggest though is to find your passions, write them down and read them often. What are your passions? How did you find your passions?