What would ya do for a . . .

I've been mulling this over since I got back from California. Bear with . . .

Okay, so you're sitting in a room with 20 people all talking about their jobs and the striking thing is that none of those people are complaining about what they do and are all enthusiastically going on about their careers and whats been happening with such and such and so and so. And I'm thinking to myself, damn wouldn't that be nice to be able to do. I bitch about my job all the time, mainly because it's exhausting and at the end of the day I don't have the energy to really focus on things that I want to do or 'explore' in my own life.

Passion. It seems to be missing in a lot of what I do. Whether this is because I don't have the energy to put into things I'm passionate about, or what, I'm not quite sure about yet. Then there's the philosophy degree, which still highly interests me, don't get me wrong, but this thesis is slowly killing the passion and consequentially all the joy that it once gave me. It's become a teeth grinding process at most times. The sad thing is that the times at which I seem to have the best ideas flowing through my head with my paper are at 11pm and if I stay up to write them out I would probably become comatose after a week of writing til 1am and waking up at 6am and working for 9 or 10 hours everyday. Maybe I just need to switch to a different time zone (like two hours later from this one).

The question of 'what are you passionate about?' has always seemed like one of those questions that has been asked of me since I was in high school. What interests you and you should do that for a living. And yet there seems to be this proving ground that you must trudge your way through before you get to accomplish your passion. Being the underling at a business to get your foot in the door, earning degrees where people control what you study and doesn't entirely interest you, internships, and all the stuff that seems to suck the excitement out of what you had hoped to be doing.

So as I was listening to these people talk about what it is they do and I began to become a bit envious of seeing that excitement in their eyes and hearing it in their voices. These people had passion, something that hasn't really been with me for quite some time. And so I've been thinking back to what drew me in to a degree in philosophy in the first place to try to reconnect with that initial passion and recharge my enthusiasm for finishing this degree/thesis and moving on to teaching/philosophizing or maybe giving up on the whole adventure and changing paths completely.
*Mom if you read this don't have a heart attack*
I think one of the most important things that comes to mind in tracing back is from one of my first philosophy classes I ever had where 'know thyself should be written on the portals of philosophy.' The idea of struggling to figure out who we are, who I am, and what our purposes and responsibilities are in life. And not just to figure this out for myself but to help others become better people as well. To challenge people to constantly reflect upon their own lives. It's why I love Socrates, Kierkegaard, Wittgenstein, Dooyeweerd, heck even Calvin. These people have had the courage to ask hard questions of the self and have asked others to come along for the ride. There is something marvelous in someone finding something out about themselves and also terrifying at the same time. I have always been a problem solver, a puzzle lover, a riddle liker and philosophy has always presented the greatest challenges in terms of the riddle of our meaning.

It was good to reconnect with that thought and passion I had back so long ago, and I thought I would share it. Now I just have to figure out how to re-engage with the puzzle that is my thesis. Or maybe the problem is that it's solved and I want to move on but I still have to get it out of my head and onto paper.