Hold on to your passion and don't let go

Passion stirs in all of us. It might be the one, single thing that makes you get out of bed in the morning. It could be the only reason you're pursuing a college degree.\nThe Olympic athletes competing this week in Turin, Italy, are an excellent example of passion. At 2 a.m. Thursday, the NBC commentators discussed how Dale Begg-Smith, an Australian competing in the Men's Moguls skiing competition, started his own Internet company in order to finance his Olympic training. Consequently, he is also a Lamborghini-driving multi-millionaire. Look where his passion has taken him!\nWhether your passion is art, skiing, compilers or rocks, it is an integral part of you. If you're lucky, you might get to use that passion in a career. Who wouldn't love to get paid for what they love to do?\nBut what if you don't know what your passion is?\nLast June, Steve Jobs, the CEO of Apple Computers and Pixar Animation Studios, gave a noteworthy commencement address to the graduating class of Stanford University about his journey to find what he loved. He narrated how he dropped out of college, lost his job at the company he created, found someone with whom to spend his life and reclaimed his position at Apple.\nHe is not alone in his haphazard path to success. The PBS documentary and book series, "Roadtrip Nation," interviews people who have found success in their passions, many times in unexpected ways. Yet none of them regret their failures and "mistakes" that occurred on their way to finding the jobs they have now.\nFinding that drive can be half the battle in the quest for happiness. The scariest parts are yet to come as we move into the next phase of our lives. Whether you are graduating this May, in 2009 or considering dropping out this month, these thoughts are probably on your mind. I'm graduating in May and I am scared to death.\nThe changes we'll be facing as we leave this campus are many and varied. You might be moving far away or staying nearby. Significant others might be more than a day's drive and families might be farther than that. Following your passion in a job might not make changes like these any easier, but it might make them more worthwhile in the long run.\nI don't know where I will be living this time next year, let alone this June. But as I look at the successes that Jobs and others have had simply by pursuing what they believe in, the fear fades a tiny bit -- or at least pushes to the back of my mind. So while I worry about whether my parents will help me out financially and how long it will take to find a job, I try to remind myself of people like Jobs and the ones from "Roadtrip Nation." I am not jealous of those who have a plan. My greatest adventure will be the journey ahead, as long as I follow what I love.