If you are not passionate about one thing, does that make you a failure?

Are you familiar with the comment, "If that fails, I will try..."?  What does that even mean??  As we live our lives and make choices, we can be made to feel like a failure when something does not turn out according to plan...our plan.  I know, I am being confusing so far, but while listening to a radio show recently, I continued to hear kids talk about what they want to be when they grow up and would refer to the above phrase frequently.  So, sounds like they are ready with a back-up plan, but why the emphasis on the word fail in regards to their own life?

Okay, I am not exactly sure I understand all of our ideals as a society...I mean, sure, it can be helpful to have a plan for our lives, but really, there is no recipe for anything when it comes to how we live our life.  The best we have is experience.  So, if we are actually making some choices and we one day learn one of those choices is not going to work for us any longer, then it would seem we may have just learned one more thing about ourselves.  Personally, I much prefer the sound of learning to failure.  This may also allow us to move onto another choice in our life and recognize in hindsight that it likely would not feel quite the same had we not have had that previous experience...see where I am going here?

I just figure all of our choices are guiding us to a life of greater fulfillment.  That same radio program refers to the need to find one's passion in life and to stick with it! I have heard this a lot over my years and I have to admit, all it has ever done for me is to add a great deal of pressure in the life choices department. As a young adult, I remember thinking, what is my life's passion?  How come so many people know the answer to this I don't?  I realize now, I was not alone.  If I was listening to the words we tend to use, I would say I had to move through a great number of failures before finding it.  But then again, as I moved through my experiences, I recall feeling bits of passion for any number of things throughout those times.  By simply making the end result our main focus, we can become very down during the process and ultimately miss out on some pretty great moments.  

The words we choose to use can have a fairly significant impact on how we feel about our lives.  Furthermore, if we buy into a phrase or word as a whole society, this can be even more damaging to our self-esteem if those words are not overly helpful.  If we are led to believe that we are in constant search for something we do not think we have found yet, we may never get to enjoy any of the moments in-between.  Take a moment to blend all of your moments together in your life and notice how one can build on another;  suddenly it can feel like, hey, I am living my life!  The important part here is to remove that natural tendency to compare yourself to some societal ideal and to take time to look at the inner you.  All of the choices that have led you to where you are now are certainly not failures, but rather contributions to your life and possibly deeper fulfillment.  Unfortunately, it tends to take lots of lived experience before we figure this out :) Enjoy your moments!