What is something you used to truly love doing?
The old violin
Waits quietly in its case
Wood remembers hands
What we thought was lost
May have only changed its shape
Waiting to be known
We remember tunes
So when another song comes
We recognize it
What is something you used to truly love doing?
Maybe you painted, danced, played music, hiked, gardened, built things, or became fascinated with something nobody else seemed to understand. Maybe it was something you did every day, or something you waited all week to have time for.
Think about something you once truly loved doing, but don’t do much anymore.
Our passions change as we move through life. Sometimes we simply lose interest, or one passion is replaced by another. Other times, life changes and something gets pushed aside. And sometimes the obstacles come from within. We lose confidence, compare ourselves to others, or something we once enjoyed becomes something we feel we need to be good at.
There are probably a hundred reasons why we leave something behind.
But sometimes revisiting an old passion gives us a very simple answer. One person preparing for our Journey remembered how much he loved writing short stories and a book he had wanted to write for years. Suddenly the story began coming together in his head, and he realized he didn’t need to Journey about it. He needed to sit down and start writing the book.*
But perhaps the more interesting question is not why we stopped. It is what happened to us when we were doing it.
Maybe playing music gave us confidence. Gardening connected us with the earth and the seasons. Exploring the woods let us expand our imagination*. Some passions gave us community while others gave us somewhere to be alone. And some were simply fun.
One of the more interesting ideas that came from our Journey was that the hobby or skill may not actually be the passion. It may only be the tool we use to fulfill the passion.*
We may not have a passion for sewing, but a passion for making something with our hands. We may not have a passion for cooking, but a passion for feeding people. Maybe art isn’t the passion at all. Maybe the passion is creating.*
This also means the tool can change while the passion remains. One person remembered wanting to play flute as a child, but her fingers were too small, so she learned recorder instead. Many years later she discovered the Native American flute and found something that felt much closer to what she had originally been looking for*. The passion had found another tool.
That changes the question a little.
There was probably a time when we did certain things simply because something inside us came alive when we did them. Sometimes that feeling was also tied to being noticed or appreciated by others. Being witnessed may have been part of the passion rather than something separate from it.*
One person remembered singing as a child, in church and for other people, until judgment and self-consciousness gradually changed her relationship with her voice. She still sang when she was alone, and during the Journey she saw herself singing again while playing her harp*. Another remembered dancing when she was young, in ballet and school musicals, but disapproval and later physical limitations got in the way. Her Journey brought back a very simple message: she needs to dance*.
So revisiting an old passion doesn’t necessarily mean bringing it back in exactly the same way.
You may remember playing violin and realize you have absolutely no desire to start practicing again. Maybe that violin belongs exactly where it is, tucked away in a closet. But perhaps by taking it out and playing it once more, that spark of passion might ignite into a desire to pick up a flute, if not the violin, again.
Because perhaps it’s not the violin that is calling you.
Perhaps it is the feeling.
There is also the possibility that an old passion has simply completed its work. We don’t have to reclaim everything we’ve left behind. Some things belong to a particular season of our lives. We can appreciate what they gave us without trying to become the person who once did them. It also may be that a passion needs to be left behind because it was used as a bandage for some deeper wound*.
And sometimes what we thought we left behind may return through something completely different. A passion can survive even when the way we once expressed it no longer fits us.*
Maybe that’s part of the reason to revisit these old passions. Not necessarily to bring them back, but to remember what passion itself felt like: that excitement, anticipation, or feeling that something inside us has suddenly come alive.
Because remembering what passion once felt like may help us recognize it when it appears again.
It may return through something familiar, or it may arrive through something we have never done before.
What is something you used to truly love doing?
* Insight from Journey-Working group meditation.
This is my journey,
— Nate Long “Owl”
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https://blueeyeart.substack.com/p/revisiting-past-passions