plant some passion in your mental garden

Today, go cultivate something. But don't run out to The Home Depot and by yourself a couple packs of sunflower seeds; go plant some passion in your mental garden.

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Passion is universal humanity. Without it religion, history, romance and art would be useless.

- Honoré de Balzac

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Follow your passion, and success will follow you.

Terri Guillemets

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There was a reason I started today's post with 2 quotes (courtesy of quotegarden.com), but you'll just have to wait and see what it is.

Sometimes when I write I have a clear vision of the message that I want to convey. Sometimes I have to think about my day and review it. I am a firm believer in fate and that all things happen for a reason. So while my day might be composed of just a few average events strung together, there is meaning in each day.
Today was, I would say, an average day. It was not gut-wrenching, difficult or piece of cake easy. It was fine. There wasn't really anything in the day that made me say wow, but it wasn't a bad day, by any means.
The difference was that today, I got out of the hot tub and jumped into the pool. I actually didn't go into a hot tub, and I didn't have swim practice today. What I mean is that I have been in winter break mode since December 22, and I hadn't switched into school mode since today. I decided that today I was not going to moan and groan about school and I was going to live school to the fullest. Meaning I was going to become engaged in everything today.
And having passion in something makes your day a lot more purposeful and fun. I mean, what's more boring than half-heartedly doing everything at a just-passing level? And even though I really hate math, I mean I really hate it, I engaged myself and actually found it a lot less daunting than I had thought. I read and reread everything for anatomy and thoughtful took notes, contemplating each idea and trying to picture it in my head, instead of just passively reading through and copying the book down in my head.
I also finished my senior ad, which is like unshackling myself because there will be no more senior ads EVER! And during this free time, instead of talking, I finished one of the best books I have ever read. Kate Chopin's The Awakening. What a book. Usually, I will start off really motivated to read a book and I will annotate the book until I've written a novel in my novel. But then the annotations start to become more few and widespread and my thoughtful reading turns into skimming and browsing. But I really wanted to finish this one, even though we had finished the unit about it. And what a book it was. The feelings that book contained and the emotions it made you feel were just overpoweringly passionate. I felt like I knew those people and that I too had known the Grand Isle and swum (?) in the vast sea. I was actually pretty depressed when I finished it because there was no sequel and no more stories that contained these very people. So if you have absolutely nothing to do, go read The Awakening. Plus it's Transcendentalist, so I fully endorse it.
And usually I can't be bothered to listen to stories about American history, but when I forced myself to take really close and thoughtful notes and thoughtfully analyze each story, it became pretty interesting. And I'm no history buff or anything.
But when you try to cultivate passion in even the most disagreeable of things, you will find that you enjoy the things that you never thought you would. You feel a sense of completion and wholeness. You feel less vapid and more vibrant. All the cells in your body feel happy and you can almost see them doing a happy dance that is crossed between a salsa, tango, and cha-cha.
So if anyone asks you if you are going to grow a garden this spring, say yes - you'll grow passion [fruits] (did you like my little ironic twist! delicious!).
And remember - anyone can be a farmer.