Fashionista to Passionista

pas-sion  – noun. Any powerful or compelling emotion.

Often when you hear the word “passion” one thinks of a passionate love affair. And yes, being in a passionate love affair may indeed cause you to leap out of bed for something other than causing a Dutch Oven (if you’re not sure what I’m referring to, google Dutch Oven slang). Being in love may cause you to postpone sleep while you watch the object of your affection drift off to dreamland. Who hasn’t listened to Steve Tyler sing “I don’t want to close my eyes, I don’t want to fall asleep, cuz I’d miss you babe, and I don’t want to miss a thing”, and thought I know, right? Who hasn’t leapt out of a warm, comfortable bed to try power walking or jogging or any other hellish early morning activity with the love of your life because you want to be conscious as much as possible. Because they’re just so amazing. They’re so interesting. And you don’t want to miss a thing.

Ah, love. Many of us, by now, have realized that building our life around a relationship is a double-edged sword. Doing so can provide much joy, and just as much disappointment. Relationships are wonderful, fabulous, challenging, disappointing, and back to wonderful. And they are all without. The passion this blog is about is within. It is housed entirely within you, and therefore no body, and no thing has the power to affect it. That kind of passion is indestructible, impervious to life’s uncertainties and humankind’s foibles. It is entirely and utterly within your control and I can tell you from experience, it provides the kind of joy that no love affair with a person can provide. It provides delight and confidence and knowing. Because it’s not about you as referenced by another, but it is about you, undiluted.

(Perk: When you fall out of love with an interest, it won’t flame you on Facebook, slash your tires, or trash talk you to your social circle.)

Give it some thought. What would get you out of bed if you didn’t have to do it? For me, I’ve discovered two loves over the past year. The first is writing – something that was always in the back of my mind but is now front of mind. I will get up early because I have an idea rolling around in my head that is pushing against my skull to get down on paper (well, on the screen). It will keep me up at night. It will give me butterflies. Since buying the car of my dreams two weeks ago (2011 6-speed Mustang, dubbed The Beast), I will get out of a warm, comfy bed, back out of the driveway, and rumble quietly out of my still-sleeping neighborhood so I can shift my way through 6 gears out of the suburbs, and then open him up and let all 305 horses fly down the highway. What delights me may have no effect on you whatsoever. Not only is that okay, that’s the point. It’s all about me.

Find out what, not whom, you are in love with, and you will create a whole new level of passion in your life. If it gets you out of bed in the morning, chances are you’re on the right track.  You are amazing, You are interesting. And you shouldn’t miss a thing.

It seems that mid-life crises get a bad rap. I’ve been pondering this lately because I had an epiphany the other morning (but I now have meds to prevent that kind of thing from happening again…) I realized, for the first time in twenty-two years, that my mornings are now my own. I’ll just wait a moment while the gravity of that statement sinks in, because it’s a biggie.

Insert a thoughtful music montage here….

After twenty-two years of having to consider one or other of my children’s schedules, needs, priorities in the morning, they now are functioning independent of me. Halle-friggin’-luiah! While they both still live with me full time, they have their own schedules, they tote themselves around, they (mostly) make their own money. Whaddya know? The first ten years I was married and the last twelve were as a single-parent. My ex (and dear friend whom I’ll call Chuck – as in Yaeger, test pilot) says I should take most of the credit for raising two decent, functional human beings because they’ve always lived with me fulltime. However, I am always quick to point out that without his financial support, I could never have purchased all the wine and Excedrin that two decades of child-rearing requires, so I think we made a good team. What this new state of affairs means, is that I have some headspace available that was previously taken up by kid stuff. I have some room in my brain. And it immediately filled up with American muscle. Let me explain.

Back in the early 70’s when I started high school, I didn’t want the boys who drove the muscle cars to school (well, except Rob Langedyk – he was an unattainable god, but that’s another post). I wanted the cars.  Raised in a family of men who ran and worked for Ford Canada, it could be said we were a car family. My grandfather’s yellow Mercury with the blacktop, my father’s beloved ‘65 black, convertible Mustang, my grandmother’s Falcon which I believe I took out of gear when I was about 3 and the car and I slid down the driveway and across the road. Come to think of it, that early experience of exhilaration behind the wheel may very well have been the seed that blossomed into a love of driving and the open road.

Well, life carried on past highschool to marriage and children and practicality. Except for a short affair with a ‘78 Camaro (which was perfect except it was an automatic – make no mistake about it: driving a car with an automatic transmission is sitting, not driving), our priorities became whatever was economical and practical. Enter the K-car years and honestly, they’re too painful for me to dicuss here. (I feel like Burl Ives’ Sam the Snowman shuddering behind that big umbrella when describing the Abominable Snowman – those K-cars were horrifying.) Eventually I moved on to an Escort wagon and then a Focus wagon, since I had to cart around two growing kids and two fairly hefty dogs. About 6 years ago, I moved on to the Ford Escape, and absolutely loved it. It still wasn’t driving, but it was more fun, and prettier, than a wagon.

Interesting how when I get a few spare cells in my brain, that it fills with American muscle. Why is that, I wonder? Well, it could be that I’m currently on a personal voyage of self-discovery, to root out those things that bring me joy. After all, isn’t that why we’re here? To discover what we love, what makes us get up in the morning with joy, and then go and do it? Bring it out into the world? Share it? Build with it? I think so. So, those kind of thoughts are the ones that rush into any empty spaces in my brain at any given time (like those quiet Sunday mornings when the kids are still asleep and it is blissfully and utterly quiet). That’s when my soul starts to speak, and I have started to listen.

I realized that – ta da! – I no longer need a vehicle that will cart around two big teenagers (and all their friends), and two big dogs! Huh. Now for those of you thinking, well duh, do you need a helmet? let me just say that when you’ve spent a good portion of your brain power on single-handedly raising kids for a couple of decades, those thought patterns become really ingrained. And so I am constantly surprised by these aha moments that are coming more and more often these days, and my money, time, and headspace is freeing up. What a wonderful thing! But then, as soon as I pictured myself sitting in a shiny, new Mustang, my first thought was oh dear lord, I’m a giant cliche. I’m (amost) 50, and I want to buy a pretty sports car. Middle-life crisis, anyone?

But wait. I will not go gently into the mid-life crisis! In fact, this isn’t about a mid-life crisis at all. It’s about a mid-life awareness. I’m not trying to recapture my youth – hell, I never had a muscle car as a youth. I’m not trying to be 20, or 30. No, I was driving the car that can’t be mentioned at that time. This is about something that brings me simple, pure joy. The love of drving, the love of torque, the love of the open road. That wanderlust was put in the trunk a couple of decades ago, but I can hear it knocking. Quite simply, good ol’ American muscle brings me joy. I actually cried at the end of The Fast and the Furious when that ’70 Charger was destroyed. It was painful for me to watch that kind of wanton and unnecessary destruction of something so pure, elegant, and powerful, even for the sake of art. Oh the humanity!

Sure, some of us at any given time will fall prey to an internal crisis. We may wear clothes that are too young or too tight. We may grab ourselves a younger lover. And some of us may buy a car slung so low that we need to take Robaxacet to get in and out of it. For me, it’s all about discovering those things that exhilarate you, that inspire you, that motivate and move you, figuratively – and for me, literally. I’m putting a picture of a Mustang GT on my fridge and I’m going to leave it there to remind me that life is about joy in all forms, and sometimes in the most unexpected places. And if this is textbook mid-crises in action, I say bring it on!