Blog: Take your passion
Mina has been taking her passion for dancing and making it happen on stage for years. Everyone has a passion. The hard thing is to be fearless in pursuing it!
What is your passion? This is possibly a dreaded question for many of you, as feelings of guilt, confusion or maybe even embarrassment may arise.
For those of you who know me, I do have a passion. And I am privileged to have found this passion for dance and especially the street dance style, popping. But today, I am not going to tell you to go find and follow your passion because that’s completely unrealistic. People who ‘have a passion’ didn’t go searching to find it, because passion does not come from the head, it comes from the heart.
Using American author Mark Manson’s analogy, I want you to think about a child’s love for playing at the playground. A child does not go to a playground to ‘search’ for fun – they simply go out there to enjoy themselves. This sense of freedom is what often makes children so pure and vulnerable, something that we perhaps lose as we grow up. We worry about priorities and expectations from ourselves and others, which then limits our ability to have an honest go at things.
I have been dancing pretty much my whole life, but when I made the decision to switch dance styles, it helped me reach where I am today. I struggled to make this decision for several years as I was honestly terrified to stop the 11 years of classical training and suddenly transition into this foreign world of street dance. But fast forward two years and I can look back and confidently say that this was one of the best decisions I have made in my life. I never expected popping to help me discover the beauty of freestyle dancing, meet and form strong friendships with people from all walks of life, and understand the importance of being kind to yourself.
You may be wondering when I discovered my passion for dance. I honestly have no clue. But I think the moments when I am enjoying the feeling of moving freely with myself and other dancers, and improving along the way, makes me feel this sense of passion.
So, I hope you can see from my experience that it’s important to be open to various opportunities and make decisions that will make you happy. Honestly, you’ll never know how something will turn out unless you actually try. If you don’t end up liking something, that’s okay. But don’t stop there. Keep going and keep trying new things. And if you don’t have a passion yet, that’s completely okay too. This may sound unrealistic and vague, but this sense of passion will actually come out of the blue one day, trust me. You need to believe in yourself and not limit yourself in anything!
I will leave you with a quote from Nelson Mandela: “There is no passion to be found playing small – in settling for a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.”
Mina (Year 12)
Prefect 2019/2020
You can view Mina's speech