PASSION AND STARDUST

I have always been told I over feel.  What does that mean?  Too sad, too happy, too compassionate.  I have been tearing all morning watching reunions of families of the Japan Quake.  Bring someone to the phone to speak to a family member found and tears were blurring my pop tarts. I am a passionate person.
To live life without passion makes no sense to me. Either you love it or you don't.  Either it's worth fighting for or it's not.  If it is, then it will need passion in the fight.  If you aren't a passionate person, you will never ever win the fight.  A life without passion is workable.  It's a slow and steady course.  And there's something to be said for that.  It's an easier life for sure.  It's predictable.  It doesn't involve much risk.  Passion is a tricky thing.  How much is too much?  It can be overwhelming.  Passion requires us to jump in with both feet, to go for it, to trust in the landing. To love without passion...well, I wouldn't even begin to understand how that works.  Passion really requires trust on this one.  It's not really trust in the other person, it's trust in ourselves that if we put it all out there, it will be ok.  We will live.  I'm not talking about the passion of damp warm bodies under cotton sheets, although that is passion too for sure, but the kind of passion that makes you really live in the moments, live FOR the moments.  Something as simple as a shooting star, or for me the passing of the International Space Station the other night over our house as I watched with my son who will begin studying astrobiology in college in the fall.  That moment was filled with passion, though it was silent.  Watching him watch the ISS in it's orbit and hearing him describe it all to me, hearing the passion in his voice,...I was about to burst.  But I was quiet, enjoying him. It was HIS moment of passion.   Passion is taking moments and feeling the impact and holding it in a memory of stardust. FEELING it to it's intensity.
I interviewed George Burns once.  I asked him "What is the secret?" He had lived a long life and he had been able to do what he loved.   He told me to to find my passion, then figure out how to be paid for it.
"Whatever makes you get outta bed in the morning, thats a passion."  Your kids, your job, maybe the money your job brings you, do everything with passion and it all becomes more satisfying. I'm paraphrasing, but you get the picture.
Passion is seeing the big picture and realizing the MOMENTS in the MINUTES you live.
It's not always easy to live with a passionate person, I know.  Everything is a little louder.  A passionate person fights harder for their point of view, but also loves openly and shares deeply. Passion is a way of life for the passionate.  Full of fire and sunshine and love and belief and dreams...and stardust.  For in the end, at the end of it all, those passionate,full-of-life souls, like all souls, return to the night sky.  Those over-feeling, laugh-easy-cry-easy souls just shine a little brighter, for all of us to see.
I can't imagine living without passion.  I know some may say it's a risky way to live, to just close your eyes and jump.  Somehow, I know with every jump, even if I crash, it was better to have jumped than to have stood on the edge of my cliff just looking at the other side for a life time, wondering what the other side would be like.  Before I know it I would be too old to jump, too filled with fear.  Fear cripples you and prevents a passionate life.  Fear magnifies risk to a distorted view of reality.  And a life of passion is filled with risk, from putting your love and feelings out there to taking a job on the other side of the country, to fighting loudly for what you truly believe in.  A very dear friend of mine has a favorite quote which I "borrow" all the time..."DEATH TWITCHES MY EAR....LIVE, HE SAYS, I AM COMING."
I love this ...and so I chose to go for it..to LIVE, to FEEL, to be UNAFRAID, to LOVE, and to be filled with PASSION everyday...for soon I will be stardust again....