Passion Play

Growing up I attended Fallbrook High School in San Diego County, so over time I became a huge fan of the San Diego Chargers. My friends and I attended a lot of games at “Jack Murphy Stadium” and the San Diego Fans were super loyal and insanely passionate about their team. The San Diego Padres were the other team that we all rooted for and I’ll never forget how fun it was getting together with good friends and good food around a big screen TV to watch the games, yelling, screaming, and living vicariously through our favorite players.

Later on, after briefly attending Cal Berkeley, I moved to Orange County because College turned out to be something I didn’t really have a passion for. So I started trying to build a new life for myself with a new job, new friends, and new sports teams to root for. I guess I was hoping to finally find my passion and finally… come alive! I immediately fell in love with The Angels and went nuts when they won the World Series in ‘02. We didn’t have a local football team back then, but we do now. In fact, we two LA Football teams to root for. How great is that! Except, as much as I love my sports teams, and as much as I love the players, I totally live and die with each and every game. Being a Chargers Fan meant never getting to see my team win a Super Bowl. The Chargers only went once and were blown out by the 49ers. Being a Padres fan meant never seeing my team when a World Series either. The Padres did make it to the WS twice but were blown out by the Detroit Tigers in 1984 and the Yankees in 1998.

Which got me thinking… The problem with loving sports and being passionate about a team, or passionate about anything for that matter, is that you can often get your heart ripped out. Kind of reminds me of the pitfalls of life in general. You know that you can never count on things going the way you want them to, but yet you hope they do, and then you have to live and die with the good and the bad.  Basically, being passionate about anything is like being on an emotional roller coaster.

But is that such a bad thing? Yesterday, something happened in my world that has never happened in all my 65 years of living. The San Diego Padres had to play a double header against the SF Giants and won both games! The Angels had to go up against the Colorado Rockies in Colorado and yet got the win when Albert Pujols hit his 660^th career home run! The San Diego (I mean Los Angeles) Chargers started their first game of the season with a brand-new quarterback and surprised everyone with a 16-13 victory! And the Los Angeles Rams, who started their season in a brand-new stadium against a very tough Dallas Cowboys Team, also got themselves a sweet victory! Incredibly, every single team I rooted for yesterday won their game!

So what am I saying… Being passionate may have its ups and downs, but life without having passion for anyone or anything, is no kind of life at all.

Don’t ask yourself what the world needs, ask yourself what makes you come alive? And then go out and do that. Because what the world needs is people with passion who have come alive.

~ Howard Thurman