Everyone needs a reason to wake up in the morning. In the same way that we need food to sustain our bodies, we all need passion to sustain the health and well-being of our souls. Without passion, without that indescribable vibrancy that launches us up above the mundane and into a world steeped in wonder, our souls would degrade into a state of withered atrophy wherein we are little more than robots programmed to continue living without ever knowing why.

This world is filled to the brim with opportunities for fiery passion, but the tricky part, and the purpose of this article, is to find a consistent source of passion that causes no harm to you or to others. That is, finding fiery passion that won’t burn us to a crisp.

Finding guilt-free passion is actually much harder than it sounds because of the implicit nature of give and take. A rose is no sooner picked as it is murdered, and one person’s gain is often made at another person’s expense – after all, there’s only so much pie to go around, right?

One of the clearest examples of passion gone wrong is the passion exercised by those dastardly people who find immense satisfaction in making other people feel miserable. Not only is this line of merrymaking unsustainable (these pitiful people inevitably find themselves alienated from everyone, and therefore without prey), but the self-evident expense of another person’s happiness simply isn’t worth the satisfaction sought after by these bullies.

Another clear example of misguided passion is that found through drugs. Obviously not all drugs are bad, but last time I checked Aspirin or Penicillin didn’t make me feel groovy. Illicit drugs harm the user directly in that they are expensive (money, time, energy, etc.), physically damaging and oftentimes lead to a dependence, which in turn serves to heighten the harm induced by the first two symptoms. This harm also extends indirectly to the user’s friends and family. In the immortal words of Mr. Mackey, “Drugs are bad. You shouldn’t do drugs, because drugs are bad.”

Just as clearly evident, but residing at the complete opposite end of the spectrum, is the passion one may feel for learning. Finding joy in learning benefits the learner many times over. I must confess to feeling a rush, a veritable high, when the missing piece of a puzzle locks in place and forever links formerly incongruent ideas into the master-web of my understanding… chills.

Do you see how an addiction for learning cannot lead to harm? Perhaps it is wrong to spend hours upon hours wandering the halls of Wikipedia and soaking up trivia when one should be studying for a test, but generally speaking, a love for learning leads one in a positive direction. Similarly, a passion for helping others, a passion for nature and the outdoors, a passion for the arts, music, dance – all of these bring meaning, joy and value to one’s life that cannot be measured because all of these passions nurture and develop our souls without causing harm to ourselves or others.

Intimate relationships are a much more complicated example of passion. In the same way that a passion for food has the potential to raise the overall quality of one’s life or the potential to cause irreparable harm to our physical health, we must be wary when entering into intimate relationships.

The complications arise in that intimate relationships are, by no means, inherently bad. In fact, a life void of such close, emotional encounters with fellow travelers is almost certainly a life incomplete. The beautiful problem posed by relationships is that they all require sacrifice. Sacrifice may deepen value of a relationship because it becomes proof that this other person has worth exceeding such sacrifice. At the same time, if we give up too much we run the risk of losing ourselves. In this way, everyone must judge their various relationships on an individual basis to discern whether or not these necessary sacrifices prove beneficial or harmful, holistically speaking.

A wise man once said that we couldn’t live on bread alone. Everyone holds the personal responsibility to create meaning, soul food, in their own life, and it requires considerable effort. Another wise man said that anything worth having is worth fighting for.

When you examine your life at the end of the day, the things that actually matter will be the things that make you feel alive, the things that fill you with the light of God (if you choose to believe in such things). Find something you love that doesn’t hurt yourself or others, and commit to it. You won’t regret it.

Keven O’Toole is a junior philosophy major and can be reached at [email protected].