Passions

Follow your passions. I have them and I suspect so do you. Yay. I mean - we tend to encourage that sort of thing…the individuality, the go-getitiveness, the raw energy. I encourage my students to do it, my friends, and even random people I meet when the situation calls for it. And honestly, there’s not much of a way to achieve excellence without that drive and discipline associated with a passionate disposition. Have a passion for soccer, guitar, stamp collecting? Hell - go for it and be the best you can be at whatever passion you choose to pursue.

But.

There’s another way to look at passions - a way that paints a more solemn picture. When passions run up against something that we, for whatever reason, have deemed to be of more importance, they can destroy that which is precious.

The framers of the country, for example, sought so-called “disinterested” statesmen to direct the republic free from their own personal interests, ideological or otherwise, lest they recreated the tyranny many fought to overcome.

Abraham Lincoln in his First Inaugural address, on the eve of the greatest conflagration in American history eloquently advised his fellow Americans: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.” To Lincoln, the virtues of the Republic and our deep historical connections far transcended ideological or sectional passions.

And let us not forget Melville’s fictional Ahab, whose passionate search for the Great White Whale destroyed everything around him, and ultimately cost him his life.

My point is this. We are in for quite a ride in 2024, and the potential for deleterious partisanship, animosity among fellow countrymen, and even violence, all fueled by passionate association with a political ideology, a religion, or a community, is percolating right beneath the surface. Do I expect this to tear our nation asunder? Well, not necessarily, but I do expect things to get pretty sticky. So friends, please check yourself. Try listening to people with whom you disagree. Try observing things from their perspective.

I’m not asking you to change your mind. I am just asking you to take a beat before you attack and understand why people adhere to whatever thing it is that you find so offensive.

With compliments,

Keith