On Passion

I came across this video on WeChat channels the other day on this girl who is also a figure skater, talking about how after a conversation with her coach, she realized that passion isn’t always “smiles and motivation and waking up early because you can’t wait”. Passion also looks like tears of pain, frustration, and moments of catastrophe. 

To me as a skater and a person who is juggling quite a few projects at once, I feel the same. I love what I do. Whether that is in school, outside of school, on the ice, or on the running track. However, sometimes, because of how much effort goes into me trying to improve on what I do and failing, and realizing that I just merely like it and am not good at it. This is what makes a passion seem like a burden sometimes, as to me personally, if I do something and am not good at it, but I still keep doing it, it feels embarrassing to not be the best at it. That is why I would always look at videos of me skating that my mom would film, and realize that the spins and movements I do are always not at the level of professional skaters yet, and always improve but there would always be something that doesn’t look right and always something that is nit good enough that makes me feel frustrated. Even now, when there is no one pressuring me to be better at skating or to be better than someone else when I skate, I would still feel upset if I don’t do a spin or footwork properly, as to me, if another person of the same age can do something better than I can, I should be doing better than them.

This feeling of “needing to get better even when no one is pressuring you” is even more present in myself when I am stretching/doing ballet movements. I would see a dancer my age doing a move better than I can due to their greater flexibility and more consistent practice, and that is the moment I feel like I am not good enough. But that is also the motivation for me to get better at it. I love dancing and I love the feeling of getting better at stretching and my flexibility, but sometimes, the odd feeling of “jealousy” just starts to overpower the positivity of the sense of achievement. So, the moral of the story here is that for me, passion is something that can breed other emotions other than just happiness and fulfillment.

I feel like this is what happens when you truly like something: you love it so much to the point where you feel like you would be disrespecting it if you are not good enough. I feel this with everything I do. Running, skating, flexibility, my podcast, this, and everything else. Because I love them all deeply.