The gifts of passion, purpose and meaning

'Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you love.'

                                                                                                            Rumi

There are many things in life that bring me joy. Amongst other things, I love spending time in the natural world. I love photographing flowers and trees. I love impressionist art and classical music. I love stretching my mind through reading and learning. But none of these things are my true passion for passion asks something more of us. It asks that we give ourselves to it wholeheartedly. It asks that we remain deeply committed to it even when we face obstacles and set-backs along the way. It asks that we dedicate time and energy to it even when it costs us to do so. But at the same time, it brings us something more than pleasure and enjoyment. It excites and energises us in a way that other things do not. It inspires us and gives us a clear sense of purpose and direction. It ignites a fire within us that burns brighter than any other. And it brings us alive.

If we are very fortunate, we may be able to pursue our passion in the course of our daily lives at home or at work. For over fifty years, I have been passionate about the person-centered philosophy of the psychologist Carl Rogers and the journey of becoming a person of which he wrote - the soul journey as I now call it. And through my work as a therapist, teacher and spiritual companion, I have had the opportunity to pass on to others what I have learnt from him and from my own experience of living the journey. In some respects, my work and my passion have been closely aligned throughout most of my life and I am so grateful for that.

Where this is not the case, however, finding and following our passion can be much more challenging, especially in the first half of life when our time and energy is almost entirely taken up with managing the demands of family life and work. My greatest passion is creative writing. Yet this is a discovery I did not make until my late fifties when for the first time, there was enough space in my life for the writer in me to emerge. It took me far too long to realise that I was born to write. When people ask me what I do, I still struggle at times to call myself a writer but, inwardly I have reached a place of deeper and surer knowing that therein lies one of the essential truths of my being and of my life. Writing runs in my veins. It is my life blood. I was born a wordsmith and at the core of who I am, there has always been a writer, waiting for me to attend to her, to learn her craft, to hone her skills, to enable her to become all that she has the potential to be. And that discovery has brought with it both an intense sadness that it took me so long to welcome and embrace her more fully and a deep joy that I am finally learning to honour and live the writer in me.

Making this journey has taught me that passion, meaning and purpose are deeply intertwined. One of our deepest needs is to find meaning in the life that we are living, to know why we are here and what it is we are called to do with our lives. The concentration camp experiences of the Jewish psychiatrist Viktor Frankl taught him that to live life without meaning is to be plunged into a painful vacuum that can suck the life out of us. It leaves us wandering through our days in a seemingly impenetrable fog of apathy and inertia that is deadening. It is as if we have lost our way in an arid desert that stretches as far as the eye can see. Not long after I awakened to the writer in me, long Covid plunged me into such a landscape for months on end, for the fatigue and the brain fog it brought with it made it virtually impossible for me to write. The words simply would not come and I felt utterly bereft. The fear that they would not return was never far from my mind. What if I could no longer embrace my emerging life as a writer? What if I were no longer able to live the passion that sings in my veins?

Strange though it might seem, I am grateful for that experience now. For as the fog finally lifted and my passion reignited, my determination to live the writer in me deepened. In his book, 'Benedictus', John O'Donohue describes what it is like to find to 'come into rhythm' with our deepest longings and passion. He writes of the relief, the joy and the deep contentment we experience when we are doing what we love, what we have come here to do. 'Your work and action emerge naturally; you don’t have to force yourself. Your energy is immediate. Your passion is clear and creative.’ This has been my experience too.

Soul is the source of our passion. It is the bright fire that burns within each one of us though as yet, we may not know it. To live with passion is to be able to tap freely and fully into the energising flow of the spirit. It is both to drink deeply from life and to open ourselves to all that it asks from us. It is to be willing to let go of the life we are living in order to embrace 'the life that wants to live in us' as Parker Palmer puts it in his book 'Let Your Life Speak'. And it is to know the sheer joy of being fully and gloriously alive.

'There is no passion to be found in playing small, in settling for

a life that is less than the one you are capable of living.'

                                                                                                         Attributed to Nelson Mandela

Bibliography

John O'Donohue (2007) Benedictus. Bantam Press

Viktor Frankl (2004) Man's Search for Meaning. Random House

Parker Palmer (2000) Let Your Life Speak. John Wiley

©Copyright Kaitlyn Steele 2026

Kaitlyn Steele

www.insearchofsoul.co.uk 

kaitlynsteele16@gmail.com