My Friend's Passion
My friend Jim Selman stopped by yesterday. Jim lives in Vancouver and is en route first to St. Lucia and then to Brazil and Argentina for some consulting gigs. This can be seen as an exciting and exotic way to make a living or, if you’ve been traveling around the world this way for 30+ years, a pain in the ass.
Let’s just say Jim is still paying homage to the furies that pursue him to keep making money. Not a bad thing, I guess, if that’s your passion. Thing is, it isn’t Jim’s passion. What are the other furies pursuing him, you ask? None of your business. I’m not about to do an amateur sleuthing job on his psyche.
Selman’s passion is aging. Or to be more precise, the way people think and act as they grow older. I don’t think even he is in love with the idea of getting old and dying. He is focused on working with people so that they see the exciting possibilities available during the fall and winter of one’s life rather than kind of giving in to the inevitability of deteriorating, becoming of no value, fading away.
I’m getting to the point here, so bear with me. Jim and I began talking about this about 15 years ago. Then for a long time we dropped the conversation. But in recent years Jim has gotten back into it in a big way. He has a web site, a blog, and a million ideas. His passion and extraordinary creativity around the subject make it fun to talk with him about his ideas and approach.
Here’s the only problem I have. I don’t have the same passion about it as he does – not even close. My approach is to live life fully and totally enjoy it. I don’t have a ‘withering away’ mindset, and I don’t hang out with people who do. So I can recognize in the abstract what Jim is talking about and relate to it from a distance, but the subject doesn’t get my juices going.
He wants me to participate by writing things, interacting with him and others, having ideas. I’m happy to continue our conversation and, because I love him, to do what I can to help. But I’d be more enthusiastic about doing all this if I shared more of his passion.
Let’s just say Jim is still paying homage to the furies that pursue him to keep making money. Not a bad thing, I guess, if that’s your passion. Thing is, it isn’t Jim’s passion. What are the other furies pursuing him, you ask? None of your business. I’m not about to do an amateur sleuthing job on his psyche.
Selman’s passion is aging. Or to be more precise, the way people think and act as they grow older. I don’t think even he is in love with the idea of getting old and dying. He is focused on working with people so that they see the exciting possibilities available during the fall and winter of one’s life rather than kind of giving in to the inevitability of deteriorating, becoming of no value, fading away.
I’m getting to the point here, so bear with me. Jim and I began talking about this about 15 years ago. Then for a long time we dropped the conversation. But in recent years Jim has gotten back into it in a big way. He has a web site, a blog, and a million ideas. His passion and extraordinary creativity around the subject make it fun to talk with him about his ideas and approach.
Here’s the only problem I have. I don’t have the same passion about it as he does – not even close. My approach is to live life fully and totally enjoy it. I don’t have a ‘withering away’ mindset, and I don’t hang out with people who do. So I can recognize in the abstract what Jim is talking about and relate to it from a distance, but the subject doesn’t get my juices going.
He wants me to participate by writing things, interacting with him and others, having ideas. I’m happy to continue our conversation and, because I love him, to do what I can to help. But I’d be more enthusiastic about doing all this if I shared more of his passion.
posted by Dan at 9:56 AM
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