A richly passionate life comes when we embrace a solid laugh and a solid cry.
Truth is, living your life without embracing both equally is a mediocre life at best.
A man desperately seeking to maintain and project a certain image of himself can never laugh at himself. Equally tragic is that he can't weep over his mistake or anyone else's, as he is always too busy trying to fix, manage, or control them. When this happens he simply can't engage in a win and a loss in the healthiest of ways, experiencing them as equal.
Rather his actions and behaviors reveal that he is simply trying to convert the loss that he doesn't want into the win that he'll do everything for.
He's become too needy of being perfect, too earned, to "moral", and too full of himself - thus, the pain of the world simply can't reach him nor can he be sympathetic to others. When his ability to sympathize with the world isn't present - his influence goes out the window. His leadership is gone. OUCH.
A man so dependant on his own self-image is likely to pursue salvation compulsively. He must be "saved", has to do with whatever is required for some version of "holiness", for success, and for being right. Sadly this type of man can never weep or laugh deeply because he cannot imagine being loved except by trying real hard.
Sadly when this happens, the grace that all of life actually is becomes an impossibility.
Question is... What allows you to live a deeply passionate life?
Answer - Grace.
Grace is many things, however, grace most certainly is an invisible force that allows you the experience to feel. To feel genuine happiness and to feel genuine sadness. To experience genuine laughter and genuine tears.
Cemeteries are full of corpses that no longer feel. Without your ability to feel you are dead.
When you choose not to develop your ability to authentically feel your wins and our losses, you become the walking dead. Make the wiser choice today - Stop converting and chose to live fully alive by equally embracing a good laugh and a good cry.
"The young man who cannot cry is a savage, the old man who cannot laugh is a fool" - Fr. Richard Rohr
Wishing you healthy tears and healthy laughter,
James Heppner