Passion – The compelling force of any kind of feeling or emotion.

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Episode Eight of Create Your Life Story is about the Passion that is the energy behind all great stories.  It is a term used in various different ways but for the sake of our discussion I like this version from the Macquarie Dictionary:

Passion – Any kind of feeling or emotion as hope, fear, joy, grief, anger, love, desire etc, especially when of compelling force.

With the richness that is everyone’s life some things are going to float to the top as passions and these will be the elements of a great story, they will also be defined by the elements quoted above, good and bad.

Your life is full of everything that you have done and the memories of those things are often all that you need to rekindle your passion for them. Then it’s all about telling the stories as we laid out in the last episode.

We need to look at the subject of passion in a couple of different ways.  Primarily, the passion of the person who’s life story it is and secondarily the interests of the listener.

Positive Passions

The passions that fill a life with joy…

* What are the passionate interests that they will talk incessantly of?

* What are the fascinating elements of their life that others are interested in?

Negative Passions

Strong feelings and passions can be of the difficult times in a life…

* What are the experiences of life that are difficult but are still able to be shared?

* What are the things that others are interested in that maybe are not mentioned because they are painful?

The Positive Stories

The most passionate of subjects can be spoken of easily.  Asking only a casual question will start them off onto a stream of multiple subjects and experiences all interrelated to their underlying passions.  They will weave the passions into many of the stories and don’t actually need to be asked many questions directly of their passions as they will be brought up as a matter of course throughout the other stories of life.

Slightly more challenging will be bring up subjects that are of interest to others but may not be high on the interest of the person being recorded.  These are the stories of someone’s life that are often taken for granted. The stories of the mundane and everyday.  The stories of “What was it like in your day?”  Where the person could often think, “Why would anyone be interested in this?”  These are often the stories of before technology when things were different to as they are now but because they lived them they are taken for granted.  Then they become aware that for those listening, these stories are amazing and vastly different to what is known today.  They empathise with the listener and develop a similar sense of wonder because the world has changed and they have the knowledge to share with those listening and a passion for sharing their life is created, even if routine and mundane.

The Negative Stories

Everyone goes through some difficult times, some go through truly tragic experiences and it’s important to realise that these stories are also part of a life lived.  Some people love talking of these difficult times and will talk easily of them, with passion often also.  Some will talk of difficult times to help others understand how things were and how things have improved, how from those challenges life is now better in some way.

Others may still have the pain and suffering of a long distant experience, although still broken from the experience they are able to communicate how hard it was and still is for them.