What Passion REALLY Means

Has your heart ever skipped a beat when a person you were crazy about walked into a room? Have you ever gotten butterflies in your stomach when the person you desired was talking to you?

Well, pay heed to what I’m going to tell you next:

DO NOT marry the person you are passionate about.

If you looked up the word “passion” in the dictionary, you’d probably conclude that passion is all about lust, amorous love or hate, or all that’s in between. But the word passion really came from the story of Jesus – it refers to the pain and suffering He endured because of His great love for His people.

Therefore, if you look at the actual archaic meaning, passion really means to suffer. If we apply this  term to real life in a romantic sense:  to be passionate or to lust for someone is to undergo pure agony, particularly when the person in question does not return your affections.

As mentioned in an article I read previously: One gets to a point where “the inner turmoil of loving a ‘maniac’ loses its romantic sparkle and you want something (a relationship) that sticks.”

So why not leave the passion behind and be with someone who shares your hobbies and interests; someone who is nice yet self-assured – and most importantly, fully committed to you?

Paper Hearts & Dettol Loving

When Jonathan and I boarded bus 162 on Saturday evening, I met a friend’s JC-aged brother. I waved to him while walking past and sat two seats behind. The boyfriend was on the phone and I was looking out the window when B attracted my attention. He passed me a paper heart which he made – “for you,” he said  – and told me not to unfold it because it “looks nice” the way it was.

The boyfriend was on the phone at the time, but he saw what happened. After he got off the phone and when B alighted, the boyfriend expressed – albeit in few words – that he was annoyed that another guy would pass me a paper heart right in front of him. “Ahh… Jealousy,” I thought to myself. It was cute though.

Remembering a long time back when the boyfriend had folded a ten-dollar paper heart and given it to me – which I ended up using at one time because I was short of cash – I then offered him my old one-dollar note (which Van had refused to let me use at Esteller) to fold into a heart. The boyfriend lapped up the offer. He happily took the dollar note and folded it into a heart and instructed me to put it into my wallet (and it was understood that under no circumstances was I to use it).

Being a girl, I naturally welcomed the attention – from two guys nonetheless! At the expense of sounding conceited, I have to confess that it’s rather flattering having guys tussle over my ‘affections’. (Yes, an actual physical fight between two guys took place because of me once)

… You were probably wondering what “Dettol loving” in the heading meant. It is a different story and has nothing to do with the paper hearts…

You see, because of H1N1, my colleague Matt and I have been taking turns spraying our department with Dettol to sanitize the air. As you can probably tell by now, I’ve been very paranoid and the Dettol smell assures me that the air I breathe in is clean.

My other colleague LL gets a little scared at my zealous attempt at trying to sanitize the entire department. So I threatened her via Facebook just now that I would “spring a Dettol-ish surprise” on her. When she left work, I carried out my threat. I stuck the following up on her already-crowded wall.

Then I left a note on her computer monitor…

I can’t wait to see the look on her face tomorrow.