This article first appeared in Our Sunday Visitor magazine. Subscribe to receive the monthly magazine here.
I’m blessed to have a passionate daughter. From her earliest infancy, my stock prayers for her included the fervent plea that she would find the true nature and expression of her passion: that she would, as this poem says, excel herself to be herself. When she saw gymnasts and swimmers lined up on podiums at school, it wasn’t the glory and baubles that she envied. It was the passion that made those girls rise at 5 a.m. for practice. It was the passion that lit them, so that in every waking moment of their lives they weren’t wondering what to do, only how far they could push themselves to do it better.
This poem describes passion as the lifeblood of the soul, and the poet gives us several clear directions as to how to channel it. The first is to pay attention to that dictum of Pasternak’s: To be ourselves we must excel ourselves. The second is about impossibility: We must identify what it is that would push us beyond what seems possible. The third is the full embrace of desire. The next two suggestions ask that we submit to the wave of tenderness and the jolt to the heart, which both take us out of ourselves — and make us find ourselves. We must take courage, the poet says, to face difficulties, but still hold onto hope. Lastly, we must take up dreams that — in the face of natural impediment — fly.
Saying ‘yes’ to who we’re meant to be
My daughter grew up to be a gifted horsewoman, yet she would often tell me, “That’s not my passion.” She was too worried about the falls she knew were bound to happen. The horse loved her and obeyed her, but she did not bear “possible/impossible wings” to get over those jumps. Passion doesn’t challenge impossibility by reckless stunts — like forcing yourself, or a child, to jump a hurdle — but by allowing ourselves to ride that wave of tenderness, to know that ecstasy (from the Greek ekstasis, to be outside of oneself) that can only come when we’re pursuing God’s own vision of ourselves. Then we’ll find, as the Virgin Mary did at the angel’s visitation, that nothing is impossible with God (Lk 1:37). It’s he who gives us those wings that the poem mentions — and we’re carried on the breath of his Spirit. It’s unsurprising that Christ’s agony and death are called his passion. The word describes the essence of throwing ourselves into what God asks of us. It’s the heartbeat of our fiat. It’s the fuel that enables us to be what we were created to be.
Now grown up, my daughter has found her God-given passion. I won’t name it here. All passions need time, prayer and a jolt to the heart to be properly forged and made to last. But I see the discovery of her passion as akin to the gulp of air that first saturated her lungs. It orders all her restlessness and desire. It is essential to a meaningful life. It breaks her finite limits like a miracle.
Wave
From “Five Disguises of the Soul” by Paul Murray, OP
To make a start, take this thought, this word
of wisdom from Pasternak. It comes straight
from the soul: ‘Everything
in the world must excel itself to be itself.’
So, be bold. Take whatever it is
that propels you beyond what seems possible
but still anchors you in the here and now.
Take the awakening of desire, the calling
to new and fresh purpose.
Take the wave of tenderness that
overwhelms you when you fall in love,
the feeling of being lifted out of yourself,
and living on breaths of air.
Take the jolt to the heart, the sweet
catastrophe love demands, the painful joy
of losing and finding self.
Take the courage of being able to confront
head on the trammels and trials of life
and yet hold fast to hope. Take the dream
that was weighed down by chains
but is now bearing impossible/possible
wings.
‘Everything in the world must excel itself to be itself.’
