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Abstract

would use his actual lived-experiences as the kindling for which his fire burned towards his ultimate goals and aims. He would thrust himself into situations where he would have a rich, interesting experience, which would inevitably translate to the canvass or sculpture, or whatever he happened to be working on at the time. This is a very important facet of our lives, to draw upon the experiences we have and help us shape our futures and our destiny.“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them,” says philosopher David Hume, and beauty is not merely limited to romantic attraction — beauty permeates everything we do, when we get a powerful impression of a sunset in our minds that actually moves us internally, stirring our emotions in powerful ways. This is the passion of simply living.Are you having enough of these moments? Could having more instances of richer experiences improve your life? And most importantly, whatever it is you may feel is your life’s calling, your mission, your purpose, your trade, your craft — how could moments like these be imbued into that which you construct or create? In my experience, all of the motivational books, audio-books, and videos in the world can’t compete with obtaining real-world experiences which can serve as our motivators.Internalization<blockquote id="7f6a">“It is my misfortune — and probably my delight — to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don’t go with the basket of fruit! . . . I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things — so much the worse for them. They just have to put up with it.”</blockquote>In psychology, internalization is when we “internalize” the thoughts, feelings, mannerisms, and beliefs of others into ourselves, augmenting them as a part of ourselves, replicating them, <a href="https://psychologydictionary.org/internalization/">becoming them</a> — this is why it’s extremely important to keep the right people around you, because we often internalize parts of them on a completely unconscious level.Much of the rewards of our lives (as well as headaches) come from other people. As a social species, we need each other or we begin to break down, and can actually undergo severe mental degeneration and even hallucinations without an adequate connection with other people, a topic I covered <a href="https://readmedium.com/madness-and-hallucinations-isolation-loneliness-and-the-human-need-for-others-5a34aef3ca3f">here</a> in my story <a href="https://readmedium.com/madness-and-hallucinations-isolation-loneliness-and-the-human-need-for-others-5a34aef3ca3f">Madness and Hallucination: Isolation, Loneliness, and the Human Need for Others</a>. So its ver

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y important that we draw upon others consciously as we shape our lives and build our destinies, and passionate experiences with quality people are a fundamental cornerstone of this process.<figure id="3df0"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*4ceXMgS7CJzI_S7e0zMUww.png"><figcaption></figcaption></figure>Prioritizing Your PurposeMany people go through their lives without a sense of direction or purpose. That is, they simply haven’t chosen their mission in life. Others go with the flow and follow whatever lead society dictates, never really creating their own set-out path or course to trudge as they traverse the time-space continuum. It’s extremely important for us as people to have a clear-cut path which we’re going to take up in life, and that we assemble that path through the aforementioned experiences we have. It’s important that we prioritize first beginning to construct what it is that we really want out of life, and then begin the process of obtaining the necessary experiences to serve as that “kindling” for our passion — which translates directly into the structure that our lives become.But how do we choose our path in life? Where does that come from? Like Picasso, we can push ourselves into situations which will yield radically different results. What would happen if you took a weekend trip to another place where you’ve never been and just explored, rather than the usual recovery from a long work-week at home? I’d be willing to bet that you’d walk into the next week with a newfound sense of meaning and purpose, a new drive, a chip on your shoulder, and a readiness to transfer all of those experiences you’d had into the main priority of your life.I want you to close your eyes for a minute and envision the timeline of your life, past, present, and what you’d like to see for the future. Think of all of the experiences you’ve had playing as one long stretched out movie reel — one that constructs a long narrative of the totality of qualities, like the colors, tastes, sounds, laughs, hugs, and tears, then we pretend that we have a massive empty canvass before us that we can thickly coat with all of those sensations and feelings we acquired to “paint” our own lives onto a physical medium.Your life is like an empty canvass waiting to be filled in with the qualities of your actions and experiences. Hopefully these fun thought experiments will help you on whatever journey in life you choose to take, down whichever path you choose to traverse, and you reap the wonderful rewards of everything that life has to offer.© 2019; Joe Duncan. All Rights Reserved<figure id="c9c7"><img src="https://cdn-images-1.readmedium.com/v2/resize:fit:800/1*GH8Lp7fRi4TAoYN1iPhXyA.png"><figcaption>Moments of Passion</figcaption></figure></article></body>

How to Create a Meaningful, Passionate Life

What is your passion? What is your drive? What’s your secret power that is your life-force? According to legendary artist Pablo Picasso, our passion is the fuel which burns as we thrust forth in our lives, a creative force to be applied too our calling, our life’s purpose. Picasso was big on the concept of vocation, something that seems to be lacking as a goal for many people today. What is your vocation, your calling, your deeper meaning? What is your purpose?

Many have come to the conclusion that these questions don’t have answers and aren’t worth taking seriously. I disagree. What could be a more important question than the question of the where exactly it is that the direction of your life is taking you, and how you will get there? More importantly, it is very possible to not only find our calling, but to shape it. Even in Picasso’s time, there was a sense that one needed to sacrifice their integrity to become successful, a notion he strongly disagreed with. We don’t need to sacrifice who we are in order to live life to the fullest, and enjoy the fruits of success.

And Picasso didn’t do virtually anything small, standing as a testament of the power of harnessing your passion, even today. Did you know that Picasso carried around a loaded revolver filled with blank rounds, and when asked about what his paintings meant, he would fire it at the person asking? Even if he just found someone’s conversation to be an utter bore, Pablo would fire the revolver at them to wake them up. He was “woke” and felt that others should be awoken. While I don’t advocate this or suggest you try it, it’s doubtless that Picasso was a man who lived on his own terms— he was someone who really lived. Picasso was as abstract and unusual as his art, and his living style was expressed through his life’s work, the various forms of art he left us with.

“Motivation is in the world around us. We have an infinite amount of material at our disposal, in the lives of those we meet, in what we see and feel, in what we discuss and from the passion of every woman.”

Kindling

Picasso would use his actual lived-experiences as the kindling for which his fire burned towards his ultimate goals and aims. He would thrust himself into situations where he would have a rich, interesting experience, which would inevitably translate to the canvass or sculpture, or whatever he happened to be working on at the time. This is a very important facet of our lives, to draw upon the experiences we have and help us shape our futures and our destiny.

“Beauty is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them,” says philosopher David Hume, and beauty is not merely limited to romantic attraction — beauty permeates everything we do, when we get a powerful impression of a sunset in our minds that actually moves us internally, stirring our emotions in powerful ways. This is the passion of simply living.

Are you having enough of these moments? Could having more instances of richer experiences improve your life? And most importantly, whatever it is you may feel is your life’s calling, your mission, your purpose, your trade, your craft — how could moments like these be imbued into that which you construct or create? In my experience, all of the motivational books, audio-books, and videos in the world can’t compete with obtaining real-world experiences which can serve as our motivators.

Internalization

“It is my misfortune — and probably my delight — to use things as my passions tell me. What a miserable fate for a painter who adores blondes to have to stop himself putting them into a picture because they don’t go with the basket of fruit! . . . I put all the things I like into my pictures. The things — so much the worse for them. They just have to put up with it.”

In psychology, internalization is when we “internalize” the thoughts, feelings, mannerisms, and beliefs of others into ourselves, augmenting them as a part of ourselves, replicating them, becoming them — this is why it’s extremely important to keep the right people around you, because we often internalize parts of them on a completely unconscious level.

Much of the rewards of our lives (as well as headaches) come from other people. As a social species, we need each other or we begin to break down, and can actually undergo severe mental degeneration and even hallucinations without an adequate connection with other people, a topic I covered here in my story Madness and Hallucination: Isolation, Loneliness, and the Human Need for Others. So its very important that we draw upon others consciously as we shape our lives and build our destinies, and passionate experiences with quality people are a fundamental cornerstone of this process.

Prioritizing Your Purpose

Many people go through their lives without a sense of direction or purpose. That is, they simply haven’t chosen their mission in life. Others go with the flow and follow whatever lead society dictates, never really creating their own set-out path or course to trudge as they traverse the time-space continuum. It’s extremely important for us as people to have a clear-cut path which we’re going to take up in life, and that we assemble that path through the aforementioned experiences we have. It’s important that we prioritize first beginning to construct what it is that we really want out of life, and then begin the process of obtaining the necessary experiences to serve as that “kindling” for our passion — which translates directly into the structure that our lives become.

But how do we choose our path in life? Where does that come from? Like Picasso, we can push ourselves into situations which will yield radically different results. What would happen if you took a weekend trip to another place where you’ve never been and just explored, rather than the usual recovery from a long work-week at home? I’d be willing to bet that you’d walk into the next week with a newfound sense of meaning and purpose, a new drive, a chip on your shoulder, and a readiness to transfer all of those experiences you’d had into the main priority of your life.

I want you to close your eyes for a minute and envision the timeline of your life, past, present, and what you’d like to see for the future. Think of all of the experiences you’ve had playing as one long stretched out movie reel — one that constructs a long narrative of the totality of qualities, like the colors, tastes, sounds, laughs, hugs, and tears, then we pretend that we have a massive empty canvass before us that we can thickly coat with all of those sensations and feelings we acquired to “paint” our own lives onto a physical medium.

Your life is like an empty canvass waiting to be filled in with the qualities of your actions and experiences. Hopefully these fun thought experiments will help you on whatever journey in life you choose to take, down whichever path you choose to traverse, and you reap the wonderful rewards of everything that life has to offer.