The "Passionless Lemming" Blog

I am probably going to get committed to the looney-bin after this piece, but couldn't resist spouting on my favorite subject: Lemminghood. This was written last year, somewhere mid-flight over Canada homeward-bound.

7/27/2006 (Thursday)

I am inspired to write because I was tickled by an amusing article on a man who did 10 days of Vissapana meditation in Texas (any man who can make a joke about Dubya is OK in my book), and because I was thinking about musing some thoughts on the subject of “passion”, and because I realized I hadn’t written in a long time (doing so always makes me feel good), and because quite frankly, I am just bored out of my mind on this 5-hr flight and have yet to find the land of nod in Economy Class.

Ok, so PASSION. My new job (same company, new job) in business development (read: mergers & acquisitions of companies that can’t make it on their own but strive to justify their existence & secure their future with a high price tag) has exposed me to the outside world again—meeting people who come from totally different perspectives on life (Dubya-lovers, chain smokers, and French-Canadians who talk too fast, for example). It has exposed to me the rawness of human nature that reveals itself in M&A discussions between the acquirer and the target. What is the price of a company? What is a history of x years and x number of people’s livelihoods worth? What would a corporate culture sell for these days on ebay? I’ve never liked the politics, the song & dance of negotiations involving large sums of money, but being in this business certainly exposes you to the stories of survival and success and desperate justification of one’s existence. Every story starts out the same way. “It wasn’t always this way” (with a gleam in the eye and a beaming smile)—the large manufacturing plant, the impressive machines, the dedicated management team…it started with a lone man with a cause, a machine, and a drive to do more than just survive, to be the best and come out on top, even if it meant sacrificing on the personal side—the family and the easy lifestyle and re-investing your savings back into the business, doggonit. It’s heartening, it’s heroic, it’s emotional, it’s pride and guts and sweat and tears. The way you hear people talk makes you wonder with amazement how far passion has taken so many companies to the top. I have come to believe that success in life rides on that key ingredient: passion (it helps to have brains as well).

It makes me wonder how it is one can succeed in life if he is either blind or devoid of passion? Forget being the leader of a company driving the business with single-minded passion. Let’s talk about the lemmings, the minions, who make the 9-to-5 every day in a cubicle that starts with coffee and ends with rushing out the door before anyone catches you leaving 10 minutes early. What is their passion? What motivates them to get up every morning and repeat the same routine day in and day out?

Life is passing by in the blink of an eye. If we live the life of a passion-less lemming, we have not really lived at all. The caffeine from the coffee has awakened only the senses required to carry out lemming-functions, the consciousness from within has not awakened the passion to make life meaningful. And what is meaningful? It is what each individual finds awakens and inspires him—without coffee (by the way, boycott Starbucks). Dammit—is this too much to ask? Actually, I should rephrase. How can we go through life without seeking our passion, without being conscious of what it is that makes us tick and drives us? How can we resign ourselves to a lemming life if we took an aerial view and realized that we were ants, brainless ants who willingly went through the motions without emotions of life and focused on all the wrong things?

Now it gets tough. Let's turn the spotlight on me. What is MY passion? Do I know? Am I living proof of my passion? A few years ago, alone on the sandy beaches of Oahu on the most important day of my life, I quickly jotted down a list of the top 5 things that were most important to me. Ever-critical of myself, I realized that I spent 110% of my physical time, mental energies, and emotions on the 1st item: work. Which logically led to no time on the others. And love didn’t even make the top 5. Fast-forward 3 years—happily married (whatever that means to whoever) but conflicted about personal growth and the toll of a demanding career. So what am I spending my time on these days? What is my passion? Is it a thing? A person? A what? I get seized with fear (the type where the teacher suddenly calls on you and you have no idea what the question is and all eyes are on you for the answer) because I don’t know what my passion is. And I am a hypocrite because if I don’t know what my passion is, how could I be living proof of it, and therefore, doesn’t that make me a lemming?

Lemmings of America, I confess: I am a lemming like one of you! A lemming who doesn’t want to be a lemming but doesn’t know how to be non-lemming, speak non-lemming and think non-lemming. I am the lemming that wears the T-shirt emblazoned with, “I am NOT a lemming” out of sheer desperation and then covers my eyes with sunglasses so that no one can see the wild deer-in-headlights look that is in my eyes. Suddenly, I feel like that bum on the streets of [enter any major metropolitan city] wearing the cardboard sign that says, “The End is Near!”

No, we must begin the cure, the awakening. So…What is my passion? It goes back to that frightful question and I am alone in the dark with that one. [pause while I scratch my nose and do anything to distract myself from facing this question…]

AHEM. WHAT is my passion? My first instinct is to say family, quite honestly. My family has been redefined since I’ve gotten married…just my husband and I. I feel selfish for making this such a small circle, for feeling that it should be that way for maybe the rest of our lives, sans children (excepting Alexis, Ryan & Hobbes of course). Or maybe rather than selfishness, it is a fear of becoming a lemming mama, further reinforcing my lemmingness and distracting me from the rude awakening that is my passion and inspirations. Life is not about getting a good job, marrying a good husband, having perfect children, having a good materialistic life (house, car, flat-screen TV, and IPOD) and obsessing over our weight. Is it? God forbid! Maybe I think too much. I mean, I get the feeling that my “passion” and intense focus on our tight-knit family is suffocating my husband and drowning him in constructive criticisms and honey-do’s, while at the same time giving me the sense of displacement and disappointment that I am never going to understand it all or be understood. Is the road to hell really paved with good intentions? (Or lemming roadkill whose last dying words were, “I tried my best”?)

WHAT is my passion? I have said in the past it is DVGS/the schools. I have said in the past it is my work. But my heart is not in either today.

I know that I cannot wait for it to dawn on me, for it to hit me like lightening, or worse--for tragedy to strike in order for me to realize that I am wasting my life on passionless pursuits. My passion is hidden behind my fears, those dark, moldy, spidery-like things that blind me and make me afraid to venture further. If only I could get past my fears, like a cloud over my lemming eyes. If only I could take off my rose-colored lemming glasses, which has gotten me so accustomed to seeing things one way that I am afraid of what I might see when I take them off.

What is my passion is a question that can be answered after the question of who am I. I think I’ll tackle that one tomorrow.

In the meantime, I will invest in a new lemming T-shirt, with the words, “Status quo is the killer of all awakened ones and the lullabies of all lemmings. God Save Your Soul!” and on the back it would say, “Down with Starbucks!”