As of Tuesday I officially started my job as Children’s Ministry Coordinator at Grace Presbyterian. At first I did have some great hesitation and fear, mostly surrounding whether or not I could do the job, but those seem to have all melted away. Especially after the three hour Children’s Ministry meeting between the overseeing pastor, children’s elder and myself, I am getting increasingly excited about the direction things are headed and just generally looking forward to being at the church and working. My life in general feels like I have been fueled up, and now I have something I am passionate about.
This had me thinking about the idea of passion. In a conversation this week someone asked me why I didn’t go into music. After thinking about it I articulated my idea of passions, and I thought that along with the excitement surrounding my new job I would write about my views of passion. Now, this is by no means exhaustive, but it has been an interesting way of understanding why and how I spend my time. Hopefully, one of you will find it interesting as well.

First, I see three main levels of passions. I say three because after the third level you aren’t really passionate about something, even if you still enjoy it. On the lowest, or tertiary level, you have passions which are things you don’t actively pursue, but are still something you enjoy talking about, thinking about, and learning about. For me, the best example is physics. I love physics, I love hearing about physics, talking about physics. But, I don’t carve out any time to do these things actively. Mostly, the times when I get to experience conversations or learning about physics it is on accident, or I stumble across it when looking for something else. Even though I don’t seek it out, I love when it happens and it always gets me fired up and excited.

A secondary passion, then, is something that we actively seek out. There are two That pop immediately into my mind for myself: music and cooking. Music will be easier to explain so let me elaborate. I find that music is important enough to me that if I am not actively seeking out opportunities to be working on, learning, practicing, and hearing music. That is the reason I am singing in a barbershop chorus and quartet. It is a thrill for me to be working hard on music.

So far you might be asking yourself, “That sounds more like a primary passion!” In a way, you’d be right. The primary passion I know I have is theology. Much the same as music it is something I actively seek out, thus going to seminary. It is also something I love debating, struggling with, and I find that if I go without it for too long I lose energy and just find myself craving it.
There is, however, a huge difference between a secondary and primary passion. I enjoy both music and theology, but I could only do one for a living. With either, I find myself getting tired or frustrated with it, and with music it means I have to stop. If I don’t, I lose my passion for it. It becomes a task which drives me further and further away from my love of it. But with theology, when I get frustrated and tired of it, I push myself through. It isn’t always fun, but I find that I am thankful every time I do.In the end, this, for me, is how I knew I couldn’t do music as a career. On those hard days when I wouldn’t want to do it, pushing myself would eventually wear on me. This is what happened throughout college and why I stopped singing for a whole year after.

I know this has rambled on a bit, but it has been helpful to me to work through it and I wanted to share it in the hopes someone else might find it helpful also.

Pax,

-Paul Hart Cochran