Postscript on passion

Here's a rather pretentious self portrait of yours truly on a train.
I must have been bored shitless or fed up with my book.

Andy sent me a message via our other site (novisiblelycra.ning.com) and it got me thinking; he said that he figured he did have a passion for motorsport and photography, and that got me thinking that I'm not completely passionless in terms of 'leisure pursuits', although there's no point in my trying to be passionate about something I'm simply not passionate about: football. Mind you, I'm keen on the World Cup and I do feel that there's a sense of camaraderie when England are out there playing against the rest of the world, so I guess I do kind of get passionate about international football tournaments. And then there's writing and reading and cycling, so I'm not without my 'passions' either.

I think that post of mine when I said that I lack passion, was probably too strong. It implied that I'm some kind of stoned-out zombie with no interests and a permanently vacant expression on my face. I might even have implied that Andy was the same, when clearly he's been thinking about it and has decided that he does have passions.

So, there you have it, we're both full of passion about a lot of things, although, as Andy's other half pointed out recently, we are a bit like television's grumpy old men, as a recent photograph of all of us (which appeared in Club Mirror magazine's May issue) illustrated. Perhaps the word is 'cynicism', we're very cynical about stuff in general, but there's a whole world of difference between cynicism and a lack of passion.

Postscript on Passion – an afterthought

Andy has suggested that we're cynical realists and that sounds about right – as long as we're passionate about being cynical realists.