What is your passion and how to dig it out?

I wrote earlier about finding your passion with tarot, but that post was mostly related to career and work life. Not nearly all passions relate to work, though. What if you lack passion altogether? Does everybody need a passion? Is it dangerous to not be passionate?

It depends on what’s meant by passion. If passion is understood as a driving or burning force akin to obsession, then not having one is definitely not a problem. From personal experience I can say that it feels amazing to feel passionate, but it’s also draining: it’s like a bonfire burning inside, but that can’t go on around the clock. Even positive feelings and passions can burn one’s mind out!

But if passion is understood as something that brings joy, purpose and direction to life, then I think it is dangerous not to have one – or rather, not to recognise one’s passion(s): total lack of passion translates as depression to me.

I believe everyone is passionate about something, i.e. finds meaning and deep joy, but the source varies. For others, the source of passion is family. To others, it’s career. To thirds, it’s travelling, home, hobbies, pets, art, photography, friends, literature, you name it.

In the career passion post I mentioned that I believe a passion is not an activity as such, but a feeling the activity evokes and enables.

Travelling brings excitement and thrill, home brings tranquility and creative opportunities through decoration and renovation projects, family and friends bring belonging, love and being in service of others, and so forth. I think that people who haven’t found their passion do have one (or more), but they simply don’t know their own drivers well enough to identify what are the most joyful, fulfilling, purpose-bringing emotions that exist to them. And that’s where tarot can, again, step in.

For finding a passion or more joy and purpose in life it’s essential to not get too entangled with a specific outcome. Often people believe that they’d be happier if they just had a partner, had a better partner, were fitter or thinner, had more friends, had more exciting hobbies, had a more interesting or a better paying job, had more money in general, if they just won lottery is that too much to ask!

Thousands of tarot spreads have been read about will I get this job, will I date this guy or gal, will I get more money this year, will I be more popular. And thousands of tears of frustration and disappointment have been shed when some or none of that came true.

However, these are all outcomes or for the lack of a better word, containers or platforms for potential emotions.

A new job doesn’t guarantee you’d feel any better about yourself, nor does a new partner or being more fit. What guarantees well-being is you recognising what are your personal triggers for feeling joy, purpose and direction and being able to experience those feelings. It all starts from accurately identifying what is it exactly you want to feel (elated? Happy? Excited? Loved? Self-loved? Appreciated? Energetic? Free to make your own decisions?) and how to get that feeling regardless of your current circumstances, and/or even if your plan A to gain them falls through. There is always a plan B in life. And plans C, D and so forth: a new day.

Here’s an example about what I mean from my own life. I was unsatisfied with my job for years. It’s a decent position with nice colleagues and decent salary, but the content is boooring. I’m creative and curious by nature, whereas in this job the main task is to repeat, repeat, repeat; focus on details and try to polish something to perfection instead of starting over and creating something completely new with a large brush. Type type type, write write write, and when you've done, start over again with a very similar project and report. Year after year!

I had been trying to solve this by doing repeat readings for myself: am I meant to stay or go, what am I supposed to learn, what’s the purpose of this, why am I being forced into a mould that doesn’t fit me? I got nowhere on my own due to frustration and too much emotional investment in this issue: all the messaged seemed muddied and contradictory.

I got a professional reading done by Miranda from Moonbent Tarot and that – combined with my own readings and other readers’ input – clarified it all. Interestingly and truthfully, I learned that what makes me happy in a job is the King of Swords – energy. Being able to be clear, analytical, objective thinker and communicator, and a “thought” leader (such as a scholar, researcher or journalist). And even more interestingly, according to tarot, the purpose of my job is to teach me to become a King of Swords!

My tedious job had, in fact, been a rigorous communication training program where every single word counts: it was all about editing, polishing, summarising, clarifying, making highly detailed legal and technical content crystal clear, over and over again. It’s like being trained by a strict teacher from the 19th century: get it 100% right, no ifs or buts, no “good enoughs”.

And now, when I’m submitting my first PhD articles to peer review and publication I can honestly say I wouldn’t have managed to put together publishable material without this exercise and experience. I would have never picked this specific job had I known I won’t be able to change jobs when I happen to feel like it (I seriously think I’ve been held “captive” by the Universe, because despite my best continuous efforts I didn’t find another job) and now suddenly I realise that it was for the best. What I’m getting is not what I wanted. It’s not at all what I thought I ordered. But inwardly and from a personal evolution perspective, it is exactly what I need, a “necessary step”, as one clairvoyant told me.

Life, and tarot, don't nearly always deliver a package that looks like what you wanted. But after unwrapping and unraveling all the padding, what is inside might well be the pearl you've been searching for.

Before you go on apply for a new job, take another look on your current one with tarot: what is it you really want in life? What sort of feelings, emotions, experiences, thoughts, mindset? And can your current job teach or offer any of them, if you change your perspective?

What makes you happy? Any big or small activity, thought, situation, surroundings, people etc. count.