Passionate

It has been a frantic week with very little time to digest things still! But a good week.
Tabi and I went to 2 events at the Bath Literature Festival, one Emmanuel Jai, who use to be a child soldier, was rescued by Emma and given an eduction, who has the most wonderful, gentle faith and a lovely way of sharing it in a very unobtrusive way with a passion to see every child in Sudan, at least to start with, educated. The other was Ben Crystal who has a passion for Shakespeare and wants to stop Shakespeare from disappearing and people being bored with it and only doing it for school exams.
Very different men with a very different message, but both with the most amazing passion for their subject, and both I have been quoting for the rest of this week.

There is something about someone's passion that makes you sit up and take notice, that makes you want to know more about them, about what they are saying. I know there are things in me that I am passionate about, but at times I come over too harsh, or I back off because I am self-confident. If I spoke out with passion I would get people listening.
In fact going back to the week before at the Creative writing, again there was that passion, not just that these people wanted to write but that they wanted other people to be able to share their passion for writing. In fact when I ask both Lee Weatherby and Stephen May when they did this teaching they both looked at me amazed and both said that they loved what they did so much they wanted others to do it.
With Ben Crystal he loves Shakespeare so much that he wants others to share that passion, with Emmanuel Jai it is a passion to see his nation changed and passionatly believes that will be done by education not guns.

Ian and I have had a bit of time to talk round this and really for us both, him with his outdoor stuff it is to do it to give others a passion for it, and for Ian he wants to see their lives changed just a wee bit. For me with the life coaching and other things it really is because I want people to reach their destiny and I am passionate about that.
I have realised too that I struggle with people who are not passionate about things, and I realise that some of what Tabi is experiencing after her week away is that she was with people who were passionate about certain things and she isn't finding that with those around her at the moment. Now that could be because they too are self-conscious about sharing, or are caught up in school and exams and there is no room to be passionate (which to me sounds sad), or that they really do not think it is ok to be passionate about anything, or worst of all are not passionate about things.
Or is that just a passionate person who expects everyone to have a passion about something?