“What is my purpose in life? What is my passion? Where do I go from here? Sometimes, the best way to find a purpose in life is to go out there and take action, even if we don’t know what we are doing! This is my attempt at just that."I created this blog 4 years ago and the interesting thing is that I just re-asked myself those very same questions about a week ago. This time; however, they led me to deeper questions.
I have been a dancer/choreographer/instructor for about 14 years now and Life has taken me to a point at which those questions needed to be revisited. I asked myself, "is dance really my passion?" or "is it something that I just happened to be good at?
That led me to ask, "what does it mean to be passionate about something?" To me, its that thing that you put all things aside for. Its that nothing else matters at that moment kind of thing. Its that thing you are always talking about and its on your mind, like a lot. Its that thing that makes everything worth it. If that's the case, then I can say that dance was a passion for me at one point, but not today.
So then, can your passion change? It can if it came from your EGO, if it came to fill some voids within you. Since it did, your EGO identified with it and attached itself to it. But what happens when you begin the journey of transcending EGO? When you begin to come into your true self and you realize that you never had voids, that they were in your mind, illusions of the EGO. Little by little, you begin to loose interest in those hobbies and things your were into; maybe even your passion. So then was it really your passion? This brings me back to the first question, was dance really my passion or something that I just happened to be good at, something I identified with and attached myself to?
Since I happened to be good at it, dance led me to become a dance instructor, a teacher. Teaching and helping others accomplish their goal of dance has been something I've been very passionate about and Love; but wait, I thought dancing and performing was my passion. Which brings me to another question, "can you have multiple passions?" (Not sure how to approach that one, maybe one of you can shed some light). Regardless, teaching became a huge part of my life and I took great pride and care on developing that craft.
For most of my adult life I have worked a regular 9-5 during the day and worked on my passion of dance and teaching dance at night so that I can make ends meet. Fast forward to today and I find myself wanting a break from all of that, from working so hard and so many hours - its almost like living a double life. Well, ask and you shall receive, opportunity knocked and my break came - found a place to live where my bills will add up to a fraction of what I've been paying all this time. This led me to ask, "was I teaching dance out of necessity?" Now that my bills are lower, do I need to teach dance? One thing was clear, I love teaching and I'm definitely passionate about it; so then, does it matter what it is that I'm teaching?
4 years ago I set out to find my purpose and my passion; well, when you set your intentions clearly life has a way of giving you the necessary experiences to make it happen. A year after I started this blog, I found myself in the most painful experience I had yet been in. It so happen to be the kind of pain I needed to break me down to point of change, and it was in the winds of change that I started to find my true direction. As a result of that experience, I began the journey to find my true self and to look within myself for the answers. Along my journey of self discovery and self realization, people began to reach out to me for advise on certain aspects of life. That's when I began to notice that I was getting a deeper level of fulfillment from helping someone than anything else I had done up to that point in my life. That's when I became a life/spiritual coach, and let me tell you, even dance got put in the back burner when I was helping someone or teaching them life skills on how to overcome an obstacle. So, if coaching/helping someone superseded dance - "my passion" and I was getting a deeper level of fulfillment from it, then was coaching my passion?
So, that's were I I'm - I just made a decision - a decision to explore and see who I am with out dance being a priority in my life. A decision to put myself in charge of my life and what I want to do with it. It was a decision that I've been going back and forth with, why, because I was scared to make the decision. Besides, how am I really going to know for sure one way or the other, if I don't allow myself to experience the other side. So, if you can relate to any of this, only thing I can say is, don't be afraid to ask the hard questions and don't be afraid to explore all the possibilities available to you. Truth is, like my tattoo on my left forearm says - "Life is an Experiment", so experiment away my friends.
Live.Love.Life
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