It's a hot muggy night here in Belgium. I believe all risk of snow is finally gone but I seem to have some lingering issues with the winter that was ...
Oh, you noticed.
Tonight was the night where I wrote a long reply to Laura and afterwards, inspired by my written 'conversation' with her, I wandered into this beautiful performance by my favourite Belgian jazz musician, Toots Thielemans, and Stevie Wonder.
They were playing as I read through Justine Musk's latest post, on finding your passion.
She wrote: We forget – if we were ever even fully aware — that passion is rooted in suffering. As Todd Henry points out in his excellent book DIE EMPTY: Unleash Your Best Work Every Day, the word ‘passion’ is rooted in the Latin word pati which means “to suffer or endure”. Our culture’s distorted understanding of the concept has created what Henry calls “the passion fallacy” as well as “a false notion of what it means to engage in gratifying work.”
So perhaps — when we try to find the great work of our soul and build out an epic life for ourselves ...
She suggests that we should ask... “What work am I willing to suffer for today?”
I'm aware, that when I wander in Genova, it reads as if it is all beauty and joy but it's one of the more difficult things I do to myself. I fly high on the beauty I find there, on the people I meet ... on the experiences I have but I empty myself in the high and then ... sometimes, I crash.
Reading Justine's words I thought, Well yes, Genova is a passion. My passion for that city isn't without suffering. Sometimes I feel like I fly so close to the sun, as I explore the city's history, colours, culture ... sometimes I go back to the apartment and attempt to recover from something that feels not unlike Stendhal Syndrome.
Realisation over, I read on, catching up on my incoming and voila, there was this ... and it made me think that I must blog tonight's finds. Titled 40 Inspiring Workplaces from the Famously Creative ... see what you think.
I thought it exquisite.
Below, I'm posted a fragment from an ancient painting I loved back in Genova ...
