Finding my passions in life has been somewhat of a paradox.
As human beings we like different things and we dislike other things. Be it from our upbringing, early conditioning or personal preference - the reason really doesn't matter as much as finding out what we like and pursue that with gusto.
But some of the things I am most adamant about today have always been a major dislike for me for some reason. And I think there's a pattern here...
The mundane
To start off really basic, as a kid I never liked cheese. I hated the taste of fresh tomatoes and I dreaded mushrooms in any combination - yuck! Years later - and now decades later - these things have become some of my favorite foods.
How about something more sophisticated? Ever since coming back from my American high school year I hated German dubs of American tv shows and movies with a passion. As a kid I had never minded them, but oh boy do they generally slaughter the spirit and message of the original content. Something I couldn't notice before becoming fluid in English and being able to relate better to American culture out of experience.
What the German dubbing studios have done to South Park (one of my favorite shows) will be an article in itself one day ;) I even bought a t-shirt back then saying: "Dubbing makes you stupid", and I believed it because the level of quality in dialogue had diminished and the soul of the characters had been undermined so drastically after being ported into German for most movies and series that I found it literally unwatchable. An affront!
BUT, as you may know I couldn't really wear that t-shirt today anymore. It's somewhat of a cosmic joke that I found myself years later doing dubs for some of the most meaningful lectures I had come across in order to open them to a wider audience not capable of the other language. Initially I dubbed from English to German, later in recent years from German to English (check out some of those dubs on my dlive)
So every time I find that shirt now I feel slightly hypocritical, though my reasons for making my own dubs of hugely underrated and unknown youtube videos are different than my reasons for disliking what German studios have done to the soul of many American productions. Still I won't wear that shirt any longer.
Potential passions barred off
The examples continue: When I was a kid I was thoroughly convinced I hated the sound of dad playing his acoustic guitar. I liked the electric ones with all the noise but acoustic guitar I never felt strongly about. I feel grateful that my dad never pushed it on me to try it out because - as you might have guessed - when I turned 14 I suddenly felt totally attracted by learning to play the acoustic guitar and eventually switched to electric to start my own band.
WTF.
The same goes for electronic music. I was always absolutely positive that electronic music was stupid (as if there was only one specific genre in electronic music, which I always assumed somehow...) and that I would never ever dabble in mindless music made without actual musicians hammering away on their drums, guitars and basses.
If you are familiar with my blog you know that psychedelic trance has become pretty much the main pillar of my life, and a good psy floor in festival season is still the place I feel more at home than anywhere else on Earth. The level of resonance and attraction for this thing that I thought I always hated with a passion without actually knowing anything abou it still amuses me today, I really giggle at myself when I look back to my adolescent views and compare it to my years of actual firsthand experience ;)
The pattern
While I could name about two dozen other examples I want to draw attention to the pattern here. Whenever I feel very strongly about something in a negative way and know at the same time that I have only observed it from the outside without actually experiencing it from the inside, I should really drop everthing and go check it out.
A buried passion may be uncovered.
Now I'm not saying that anything I dislike is a hidden passion, by no means. Some things I just don't care about either way.
But the things that I feel somewhat prejudiced about, things that gnaw at me or challenge me or set off an emotional overreaction in me - there is usually something major to be found there. Be it skills, choices or activities - I have often marvelled at how different the actual experience was from my limited and ill-informed preconceived notions before I ever tried it out.
Still be you
We're probably not meant to love everyone and everything, diversity is nature's way of making the whole interconnected system work, and uniformity would be the death of society (and of nature for that matter). But, here's my two cents:
If you find you have extreme reactions towards something without actually knowing what it's about on an experiential level, it may be worth diving a bit deeper to see if you are simply denying yourself something you would actually love but have been trained to disregard and dislike for some reason or other.
The intensity of the emotional reaction often points to some underlying denied need for exploration, and whenever I feel this way about anything I find I notice it much more quickly these days and can be much fairer in assessing the topic in question with clarity and patience.
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