Passion

Earlier today I was scouring my Facebook page checking on what all my friends and foes were up to when I stumbled across a blog by Toronto band Running Red Lights It struck a chord with me as I immediately recognized the struggle. My response to Scarlett's blog was this....

Passion is everything and sometimes it comes from a very dark place, but without the past you would have no future.

It just poured out of my, simply because she had struck a chord inside of me. Took me back to that primal place I had buried and walked away from long ago. I always make jokes about the navy seamen sized bag of puffed wheat that was our breakfast everyday or the powdered milk and what a treat it was to get the real thing. I have also been overheard saying, in my family the faster you ate the more food you got. As any good comedian knows, jokes also come from a dark place. There are people in this world who had it worse than me, I know that now. It is one of the benefits of age....lets call it perspective.

Regardless of who had it worse, although I had a very loving environment to grow up in, we had very little in terms of possessions which I never noticed until High School as the outlying richer areas were mixed with our hood. As crazy as it seems to people who know me as an adult, I was shy and a little withdrawn. Like Scarlett, bullies found just the right path to my door. I had to fight with my fists from time to time just to remind them I would not be taken advantage of but mostly I learned the fine art of negotiation and persuasion.

There is no doubt I am a driven, competitive, passionate person. I was not however born with those traits, they were honed through many years of struggle, torment and suffering. It is a classic tale of nature vs. nurture. My environment made me who I am today. I am proud of the person I have become, I am compassionate because I was not shown compassion, I am driven because I want better for my children then I had. I am competitive because I got sick of losing and figured out how to win.

The road of life is not an easy one. We all have our struggles and setbacks, it is how we deal with these moments in time that ultimately define who we are as a person. I often hear people complain about their situation or whine about the past and how terrible they had it. I celebrate how I was raised and the teachable moments that were presented to me. The combined total of my life experience molded me into who I am today. People should be thankful for their past, good or bad because it is those little pieces that prepare us for what is yet to come. I don't scribe these words for you the reader to feel sorry for me but to attempt to point out that you should celebrate who you are and what made you.

There have been times of late where the load has become almost unbearable, but I have the benefit of time and experience to remind me of another one of life's cliches "Whatever doesn't kill you makes you stronger"

Well, I didn't die and I am stronger than ever......

Thank you Scarlett for reminding me of that.