passions in life or the lack thereof

For a long time, I believed that for a person to be genuine, or more accurately, for me to accept a person as genuine, they needed to have some strong passions in life. In my mind, it was some sort of a measure for a person's mark of character. What I mean is that if a person has an interest that they follow very avidly and their interest is something that would perhaps border on obsession, I've assumed those people as more.... interesting(?) than others. The interest could be anything that had an "intellectual" flavour.... sports, book(s), an activity, an academic subject, the sun-moon-stars, the universe, or even watching a particular channel for that matter! Anything that they followed with single-minded interest and passion. Such people had a stronger drawing power for me than maybe those people who were not so obsessed! :) I assumed that everybody thought the same and since I identified myself as someone who didn't have any such "one big passion", wanted desperately to get to the other side.

Some would say that everybody has some strong interest in life.... well.. I don't really agree. I've met a truckload of people who've just been happy with where they are and what they're doing, with no particularly strong like or dislike of things, no obsessions of any kind. :) Until very recently, I used to consider this lot with not as much respect as the former lot. I'm not sure why I did that. I don't think there was ever any logic to it. I do remember that when I'd first started to work - in my very first interview - this manager asked me about my passions in life. In those days, the internet was still a recent phenomenon here and with a new computer at home, I was completely hooked onto chatting - IRC, ICQ etc. So my reply to the question had been, "yeah, my current passion in lfe is browsing the net and chatting online!". What an answer! Peg it to my complete idiocity! I've had multiple interviews after that and also taken quite a few for prospective candidates and I'm not sure I'd hire anyone who gave me that for an answer! Thankfully, there was nothing wrong with my answer at the time though (given the HUGE interest in the newness of the internet), but the immediate counter question was, is it something you can't live without? Do you have an online persona? Do you have "a life online"? "Um... not really...", was my reply. He then went on to explain how he as well as some of the people on his team were complete net freak (read nerds) and had done all sorts of crazy things online etc. They lived, breathed even bathed(!) online apparently!

And that was that.... nothing major. Nothing of any consequence when you think about it now. And it certainly wasn't a decisive factor in my getting that job - 'coz I did get the job. And I know that he wasn't trying to find out if I would spend time at work chatting or working! :) But that one question lingered with me. Why did he want to know if it was such a crazy passion? What is the significance of someone having such a strong interest in something? Somehow, sub-consiously I eventually equated it to people's interest quotient. Again, I see no logic to it now!

I hadn't consiously evaluated this assumption until very recently. I've met some people who were as per the above definition extremely single-minded in their interests. So to me they started out as being interesting people themselves.

But I have time and again found that it really isn't necessary for anyone to have such a fascination for things. Infact in a lot of cases I've found that people with these so called "interests" can be ridiculously fixated and utterly boring after a while. They may have these profound and deep ideas about things in general but are absolute nincumpoops (I know this might be a strong word but its the best fit) at the every day living! They can't do simple things like take independent decisions for things that affect them and their families and its frustrating to see them throw chances away and make a complete hash of a perfectly normal situation! I know some of my friends might think this tirade is directed at a particular individual, but its a phenomenon I've seen oft repeated so I'm honestly making this a generalised comment.

Most importantly, I'm finally at peace with myself for not being one of the "intellectuals"! :) SO, to me, it doesn't matter anymore if you're just a regular plain old individual with plain old regular tastes... I would still like to know you better.

I guess the growth or move away from the superficial is a slow learning process. And I'm only just waking up to this realisation... hence the post.