dogs and unconditional love

If you want to learn what passion really means, hang out with a dog. They get it. It's what drives their little beings. They express it and seek it all day long. Whether its eating, sleeping or fetching, they do it with gusto. Throw them a stick and watch their excited reaction as they bound in leaps to retrieve it. Give them a steak bone and observe how they lose themselves in chomping. Give them a bath...........and they will passionately try to shake you and the water off! Watch them protect their property and family and you'll see a growling reaction and a whole heap of barking.

Passion is the sizzling heat behind all other emotions. It's the spice which takes the taste of life to a broader, deeper place. We humans try to suppress this for the most part because too much of it is considered inappropriate. Unless you are up on a stage acting in a Tennesse Williams play, or singing the blues........unless you're in front of a group of yawning executives trying to motivate them.........unless you're in the middle of creating a masterpiece on canvas........ we tend to keep most of our unbridled passion bridled. Societal rules keep tight parameters on us.

Stand up on a bench in the middle of a park and announce to the world that you LOVE life, freedom and faeries and well........................someone's gonna call the looney truck on you. Express your deeply felt opinion on politics or religion in the wrong crowd and watch out how quickly the room clears out. Tell some unsuspecting stranger in need how much you LOVE them and see how quickly they run away with fright.

Is there some fine line between passion and crazy? I guess it depends on what other emotion passion is feeding. It also depends on the setting, the timing.......the situation. A stirring charismatic speech that promotes goodness in action as opposed to one with a similar depth of feeling that espouses violence..........well, it's pretty obvious where the line is drawn here. What's important to note, I think is that the underlying feeling behind deep love and wretched hate is the same. Passion.

Life would cease to be as fulfilling as it has the capacity to be if we didn't have outlets for feeling the wonderfully motivating, life affirming side of this emotion. It's when passion is tied to empathy that it's the most effective. If there wasn't some place to pour it out......to really FEEL beyond the normal and acceptable levels. Though many life guru types have overused the word, and have made a fortune asking the question "what is YOUR passion?"...... to a point where it's nauseating and trite sounding, it is a question I believe we should be asking ourselves so we can pursue avenues which offer us this chance to experience it.


Passion opens up our pores and makes the air feel light around us.

Passion can make our toes curl, our brains alert, our senses alive.

Passion feeds our creative juices.

Passion allows us to learn to love like we never been hurt.

Knowing what makes us feel passion helps us more than any other feeling to figure out why we were put on this planet. If we can tap into this..........to know what our passions are, we can fulfill our own reason for being here. We can GO FOR IT.

I watch my dog Lily sometimes when she doesn't know I'm watching.........her capacity to love her family, to seek out her need to be loved knows no bounds. Whatever she is doing, she is doing it with the passion she inherently has within her and she 's not embarrassed one iota in letting someone know. Yes, maybe we need to consider dogs as our role models when it comes to learning how to express and to accept a deeper level of passion. Wouldn't this world be a better place if we did so?



The prompt this week for sunday scribblings is passion............ may it's force be with you.