You can't buy what I am putting on this blog...my passion is priceless.

It’s November 2005: It’s halftime at a district semi-final field hockey match. The winner of this game will go on to the district championship as well as the state tournament. I look at my teammates, carefully. Sweat is dripping from my eyebrows, and tears are working themselves up from behind my eyes. The score is 0-0. I look at my teammates again, and I think ‘We are tied with what is considered the best team in the nation…we have a shot.’ Once more I look at my teammates, and I feel love, compassion, and determination on this night. Most of all…I feel passion for this game, for this fight, for this chance.

Fast-forward two years to August 2007: It is late afternoon and one of the first practices of my college field hockey season has just let out. Our coach has told us that not every player will be traveling this season, that some will be left behind, and that some won’t get to go on the road, maybe ever, that they will post the names a day or two before each game. My teammate and I enter our temporary dorm suite.

“I am not missing any games this season!” I proclaim. “Kick my butt every-time I let down. Push me harder each time I stumble. Whatever you do, help me to make that team every week. I am not getting left behind!” I was more passionate in that moment about field hockey than I had been since the night my high school field hockey team lost the semi-final district game. I was more passionate that day about field hockey than I would ever be again.

It was in these two moments that I truly learned what passion for anything was, what passion for doing well was; what passion for success was; was passion for a sport was. Sure I had played sports for twelve years, but it was in these moments that I knew true passion. Regardless of my team losing on that November night and regardless of my being left behind for a game in Maine that fall of 2007…I came away with something more than I could have ever imagined…I came away with a passionate heart.

I am not sure that anyone would have guessed that four years later I would be more artistic than athletic, more savvy with words than with a molded metal bat or composite stick, or that my weapon of choice would be a video camera rather than a dodge left or spin on a field hockey field. But here I am…passionate. Passionate about life, about words, about filmmaking, about sending a message to people—passionate about art and creativity!

I am not the only passionate one out there. People write about passion all the time. Some people talk about it. Some people sing about it—and normally those people who sing about it are actually doing their passion at that exact time. Sometimes our passions and our talents go unrecognized, unnoticed, and unacknowledged. Sometimes we perform for someone, or do a task for someone revolved around our passion and we never get the pay off; we never get the check for the concert we agreed to put on for some extra cash; and we never get the favor in return for doing ours.

But at the end of the day our passion is still ours—and whether or not we get stood up on a paycheck…No one can buy our passion from us. No one can put a price tag on it—because simply enough, 100 dollars for a concert; 200 dollars for beautifully stunning words, 1 million dollars for what we love—could never be enough to pull whatever we are passionate about away from us.

Occupation: Superhero

At my pre school graduation every single one of us was asked to tell the audience composed of parents, brothers, sisters, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and family friends what we planned to be when we grew up. The answers ranged from firefighters to doctors to lawyers to dentists. Why our pre-k teachers were asking us what we wanted to be when we were barely old enough to pronounce three syllable words really is beyond me, but nonetheless, I responded by saying I wanted to be the first female president. If I had known what that meant, when I was just a four year old, I probably would have said “Anything but the president.”

And if it were four years ago, I may have said “I want to be a sports broadcaster,” but now I know exactly what I want to be, and that is a superhero. I want to be able to save the world one great cause at a time. I want to impact someone who then in turn impacts someone else, which thus results in a continuous line of impact.

I want to provide the world with a kaleidoscope of viewpoints. I want to make a change.

I think part of me first realized this when a teacher once told me that I was going to change the world. This was soon after learning that my college field hockey program had been cut from the University of Rhode Island. At that point in my life, I had completely believed that sports were the only thing that mattered and that if sports didn’t exist then well, nothing else did either.

The other part of me realized how much I wanted to make a difference in the world when I was exchanging emails with a newly acquainted pen pal on the other side of the Atlantic Ocean. Instead of defining myself to him as an athlete or field hockey player, I told him that I was a writer and a traveler and that I had hoped to learn of new things of the places I was traveling, with his help, since he had traveled before as well. I wanted to learn more about the world so I could impact the world as it was impacting me.

In the last nine months, I have lived in New York City, wishing that I could help every homeless person to a piece of bread, and every child without an education to a simple math problem. I have lent my hand to people by opening the door for them even when they walked away without saying thank you, and I have given up my seat to strangers following a long day at work. I have made an effort to save the world one small task at a time, and at the end of the day I have felt both wonderful and inspired because of it. Since coming to New York, I have been changed. I may not have a full-time career just yet, but I know that putting the word superhero next to occupation is beginning to look more and more like the full-time job that I would like to take on.

And to be honest, while sports scores interest me on a “brain candy” level (as my tenth grade English teacher might refer to it)…saving the world just seems much more appealing.