Uh oh. I think I have been maligning someone wrongly — or, more accurately, maligning them in the wrong way.
It suddenly occurred to me this morning that the words passive and passion come from the same place (Word Nerd Alert: The root word for each is the French passif – suffering)
And here I have been referring to someone as passive and interpreting that as them not feeling anything.
I now wish to correct that.
I think Mr Passive Pants actually feels everything. In fact, I think he feels everything so much that he is unable to articulate or even act it out.
He is in fact rendered passive by his overwhelming passion.
Now, where once I felt angry at him for not being able to feel, I now feel utter pathos for him and his inability to do anything about what he feels.
I can be passive too after all, with my bullying sister in particular. But that is really the only place I can be branded fairly with that label. From that experience of tamping down my feelings — of experiencing them but not letting them determine my reactions — I learned that I must must must not be passive in the rest of my life. I feel everything. When someone is angry, my skin tingles; when another person hurts, I feel their pain; when the world makes no sense or I can’t stand what is happening, I get up and DO SOMETHING about it. I’m not saying I’m not quiet or subtle: i think most often I am. And I need to work on expressing anger; I’m not so skilled at that one – it gets stuck in my throat and turns inward.
So what does this revelation reveal? It shows me that Mr PP [Ed note: tee hee, I just said ‘pee pee’] hasn’t reached aplace where he can let his emotions come out of his mouth and his heart and his skin and his brain. He instead does it by proxy, at least when it comes to the injustices of the world; hanging about with those who make a difference and speak up, with those who feel and express; with those who put their senses into action.
Oh, how I hope he hangs about with them so he can learn how rather than to escape learning how. As badly as he can behave, I am certain he would be Extravagantly Beautiful if he could let it all out. Because he is beautiful inside there: I saw that much with accuracy.
1000 days 