Are you multi-passionate? Meaning, do you pursue a lot of interests and sometimes feel like you’re swirling a bit wildly in all your eagerness and excitement?
I’m definitely in this category. Have been all my life. And I know what it feels like to judge myself as “too much” because my interests and energies don’t fit neatly within the culturally-assigned script. Perhaps you do, too.
One important reason for this: when you’re multi-passionate, you’re often doing something NEW.
That means that you go in vulnerable and a little raw sometimes, your heart in your mouth, hoping like the dickens it will all come together. You find yourself in new places, with new people, called upon to offer something bespoke for the occasion. It can feel rough and wild. It can feel exciting and nerve-wracking.
It can feel like life is crackling in and through you, like you are dancing with a lightning bolt!
For the most part, you see around you people who are not doing much that is NEW. Their work takes them to a familiar place among familiar people doing familiar things. There is nothing wrong with this; how lovely, in fact, to have a measure of predictability in one’s existence!
However, the encounter of those who live in the new and those who live mainly in the familiar can feel odd and herky-jerky. It’s an encounter of two different species and each can judge itself (or the other) as wanting because of it.
The things our culture wants us to be – contained, comprehensible, assignable to a clear category – don’t suit the multi-passionate person. Standing next to one who lives neatly in the familiar, you can feel ridiculous, raw, edgy, uncertain, unfinished, silly, overly excitable, and even laughable.
You’re unbaked dough next to their finished loaf.
You’re a leaping lamb next to their matronly, grazing ewe.
You’re a whole tray of paints next to their unblended, singular color.
We need both of these energies in the world – the stable and the revolutionary – but it’s the NEW that brings us fully alive. And though it’s awkward, it’s also thrilling.
It takes courage to dance out on the edge, to open yourself to comment and ridicule, to live in the NEW.
And even though that staid person doesn’t articulate it, your freedom signals to their freedom. Your NEW sings an invitation to what is longing to be born in them.
Respect your courage. Keep going!
PS – I’m thinking about all this on the heels of a wonderful interview this morning with Elizabeth Cooper of Flutter & Sprout. She is very much a multi-passionate person and her mission is to encourage and inspire others like us. She is wise, earthy, and generous, and I loved speaking with her – another instance of the NEW in my life! I’ll let you know when the interview becomes available.
PPS – The pic is from a show this March. I never know what the room is going to be like or who will show up. It’s all NEW -and it is some of my favorite FUN.
