Is passion dangerous?

People have often told me that I possess an inordinate amount of enthusiasm and passion for life.  Well, I do. I am not going to apologize. I am an excitable boy for sure! However, I will be the first to admit that in several cases, my enthusiasm and passion has caused personal pain and discord. In my life, when emotion becomes dominant over rational thinking, trouble ensues.

Pure raw emotion for anything is the aphrodisiac of life. It can be addicting and there can be a total disregard for the consequences of seeking and possessing it. Trouble follows, pain ensues, danger increases, relationships or possibly lives terminate.

Nobody depicts the horrors of passion better than Ang Lee, the director of both Brokeback Mountain and Lust/Caution. Both of these heart-wrenching movies depict how passion can never end well. Both stories tell of two people in extreme irrational infatuation for one another and then how outside influences slowly destroy their lives.

Passion does not have to always be associated with relationships. Passion thrives within several contexts, and likewise can be just as dangerous. In the movie, Empire of the Sun, I truly appreciate how Steven Spielberg depicts passion with young Christian Bale (the character Jim) and his extreme passion for fighter planes and the pilots. His raw emotion is portrayed in the scene when the Japanese airstrip is being attacked by US fighter planes.  Jim, totally disregarding his own safety, climbs atop the roof of a building where he immerses himself in a climactic display of raw emotion in the midst of chaos. He is brought back to reality when the doctor (Nigel Havers) grabs him and tells him, “Try not to think so much!”

Ironically, I have had several friends do the same thing to me.  Several times in my recent life when I have gone over the edge with passion, I have had more than one friend tell me, “Try not to think so much.”  It works. Pulling myself out of the emotion helps. It gives the raw passion a rational perspective. It keeps me out of harm’s way.

I am a fan of passion. I have been there and I do pray I will have the rare pleasure of experiencing it again. However, I must be cautious. I am a surviving addict. I know what it can do to me. I know how close I can come to danger.

The Merriam-Webster online dictionary defines passion as: Intense, driving, or overmastering feeling or conviction. However, it also states that its obsolete definition is “suffering.”