Butterflies of Steel

There is a cancer of passion.
Maybe that's why it's such a valuable commodity - the fact that it's so vulnerable to erosion, to downsizing, to dilution. To decay.

But it is also susceptible to covert attack.
Because some people are scared of passion, at least passion in others.
They're frightened of enthusiasm. Perhaps because it represents change.

Positive change is too close to upsetting the applecart.
But it's their applecart, not mine.
And guess what? There is no applecart anyway.

Change is something to be feared.
Change is something to be shied from.
Change, after all, is change.
How perfectly horrid!

Yet it is also a quality people claim to admire.
It's confusing.
It's the secret ingredient of everybody from the entrepreneur to the reality television contestant.
I am never sure about those people we love to hate.
Do we love them or do we hate them? Or do we just want to be them?

The backlash from the semi-articulate is the darkest danger of all.
If you play the game of your life on a rigid field with four sharply whitened corners and you try to push the boundaries, you expect resistance.
But resistance can be dispatched.
There are a number of ways of doing this - soft, hard, playful, brutal - but it can be dealt with.
And guess what? There are no sharply whitened corners.

Resistance from a insidious mix of secret resentment tempered with confusing claims of admiration is another beast entirely. Particularly when it comes from pseudo-intelligent pomposity or an overblown organisation that has lost its way.

You might refer to this beast as Super-resistance.
Super-resistance requires super-resilience and enthusiasm isn't enough without it.

Passion isn't a butterfly that gets caught in a gust.
It's a driving force of dirt, guts, exsanguination and self-doubting tears with the hope but no promise of either praise or glory.
It is a sleepless momentum that propels a sense of duty, of what's right and what's not.

People grudgingly claim to admire it because they lack it.
Tilt your hat against this enemy.
It isn't passion until it is ready to take on the weather of the day.
So tool up, toughen up, and carry your windproof brolly.
The wind of change is coming from all directions.

Let everyone else be as afraid of it as they wish. (But help them if they don't).
Let them live with all the palpitations their hearts' desire. But don't let them infect you with their closedness. If anyone is going to infect, you are the vector.

Hard polish your passion and deflect their dents gently with your buffed wings of steel. If that doesn't work, run them over like Mr Bean behind the wheel of an F1 car.
Invite them along for the ride if you want.
Forget to tell them to buckle up, if it pleases you.

But whatever you do, if you have the belief that it's right, or good, or both, then do it anyway.

Because when that is the case, this is no longer about you.
You are channeling the universe.