Celebrating our passions and achievements
Kate Winslet’s director for their upcoming film “The Holiday,” Nancy Meyers says ”People do love her. The only other person I’ve ever seen love acting that much is Jack Nicholson.” [From article What Kate Winslet Knows, by Karen Valby, Entertainment Weekly, Oct 6 2006.]
Psychiatrist Kay Redfield Jamison talks about passion in terms of enthusiasm. Author of Touched with Fire: Manic-Depressive Illness and the Artistic Temperament, in her newer book Exuberance : The Passion for Life, she wants people to “appreciate how life-saving exuberance is to us as a species. I have always been fascinated by mania. There is an exhilaration in the early stages of mania that people who have experienced it would sell their firstborn to feel again. Mania is a sickness; it’s easy to romanticize unless you’ve been there.
“What is really healthy and great is exuberance. A passion for life, an exuberant temperament, allows people to do things they wouldn’t be able to do if they didn’t have it,” Jamison says. [Related TDR page: hypomania]
Susan Orlean says in her book The Orchid Thief, “I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility.”
But pursuing our passions is not necessarily a simple or easy matter, as actor Alice Krige has noted: “It seems to me that the greatest challenge, at once the easiest and the hardest thing for human beings to do, is to follow our passion.”
[Quotes from the TDR page: passion]
The same Entertainment Weekly article quotes Kate Winslet appreciating how Frances McDormand accepted an Oscar for Fargo in 1997: ”She just strutted up there,” Winslet says. ”It was almost like a performer going up there to take the podium. ‘It’s my turn!’ She didn’t make any apologies.”
And Winslet says of her own achievements: ”I work really, really hard, so I feel incredibly proud of my nominations. And I feel very proud of the fact that I’m [one of] the youngest who’s ever gotten that many. That’s amazing! I’ll be able to tell my grandkids that when I was that age, that happened to me. Wow! Yes, Kate, well done.”
But it isn’t always easy or natural for us to acknowledge the value of the good achievements our passions lead to. One reason may be that some people hold a stereotyped view of what giftedness or exceptional talent means (as merely high IQ, for example) and feel that an identity as “gifted” is incompatible with their self-concept.
Others may have a fear of failure or success related to living up to the label, or have an aversion to being thought “elitist”, “superior”, or “hogging all the glory” — and they may feel guilt, shame, or other destabilizing feelings about being exceptional. Highly talented women, according to some research, may hide abilities in order to survive socially.
M. Scott Peck noted in his book “The Road Less Traveled and Beyond” [quoted in my article Gifted Women: Identity and Expression], “Many who are truly superior… are reluctant to consider themselves ‘better than’ or ‘above’ others, in large part because a sense of humility accompanies their personal and spiritual power.”
Dean Graziosi, a millionaire entrepreneur, notes in his book Totally Fulfilled that most people “are great at finding fault in themselves - we’ve been trained to look at what’s wrong instead of what’s right… see your strengths and take advantage of them… Be proud of yourself and reflect on the accomplishments you have achieved.”
~ ~
