Passions

Interests and Hobbies.  I remember once having to explain myself on a year book form years ago, to define myself by what I liked to do, and for a moment I found I was at a loss.  What should I write down?  Many things interested me, but what could I say that would tell folks this was me?  I had friends who had no problem filling in this blank: they were big on baseball and model cars, hunting and fishing, motorcycles and playing guitar... and because they were friends, I shared some of their interests, but they did not really describe “me.”  And there were other excuses, too: I was not good enough to claim this, or people would laugh if I wrote that.  I remember staring at the sheet for a moment, then quickly scribbling something in the blank.   I purposefully do not remember what I did write and I did not save anything for posterity.

Since then, over the years, I have discovered many passions that serve to define me, and even though some of these passions have ebbed and flowed I now have a growing list to fill in that blank.  Hiking, or lately jogging.  Movie reviews.  Bird watching.  Photography.  Poetry.  Driving long distances, or just listening to music.  Long ago I used to have a sizeable record collection; now in the mp3 age that seems quaint, and I have long ago divested of all of my vinyl, but this still is part of what defines me.  I am not a very good piano player, but I have a piano and I sit down before it now and then, because this too is me.  And I haven’t taken the kayak out of the garage in a few years, but kayaking is also part of my explanation.

I continue to have those excuses not to write things down, but more and more the passions are bigger than the excuses.  It has been a couple of years since I went out on a bird watching adventure, but I still feel the draw in the spring or whenever I see a flash of new color or hear the start of a new song.  It has been even longer since I submitted a movie review to IMDb, but come Oscar time I still want to see as many of the contenders as I can.

And sometimes the passions blend together nicely.  My faith, too, is a passion.  Being a dad is a passion.  Rereading a psalm, line by line.  Taking a moment with my kids to talk about their day.  Singing a hymn with the congregation.  Going to plays and skateparks and colleges and tournaments.  Praying ceaselessly.

I started to write this - writing too is a passion - as an excuse to get back to the movie reviews, so let me dispense with that:  This year there are nine best picture nominees, and I have seen seven of them.  I have not yet seen Beasts of the Southern Wild (available to rent) or Silver Linings Playbook (hitting the cheap movie theaters now), but we still have a few weeks to go.  Meanwhile, I could tell you things about Argo (truth blended with impressive movie making), Django Unchained (suspend disbelief and do not tally the occurrences), Les Misérables (enjoy, but see it on stage if you can), Life of Pi (enjoy, but read the book), Lincoln (study the man, any way you can), Zero Dark Thirty (impressive truth that surpasses movie making) and Amour.

Go see them all, but especially don’t hesitate to see Amour, the foreign language film about old people dying.  That may not appeal to you, and it probably won’t win, even though it did win at Cannes, and you will be unsure of what you have seen at the end of the movie, but a day later you will remember things that will stay with you: the old passions that linger and fade: piano, kids; the ones that become difficult: a good, long life; the ones that have more purpose than you would think: taking the time to write things down, never letting an apartment feel empty; and the ones that endure: having someone beside you and loving someone to the very end.  It is not my story, for the moment, but I’m still filling in the blanks, and I still have years to go.