Ture Passions Never Die

Chris Iwanek

February 12, 2014

ESL 100                       

True Passions Never Die

            “Passion is energy. Feel the power that comes from focusing on what excites.” (Oprah Winfrey). Passion is what makes life truly exciting it determines parts of an individual, as well as it can reveal a person’s interests. People can feel passionate about all sorts of things, including activities, hobbies, or about another individual. One particular thing, quite in contrast to the United States, that most people in my home country of Germany are passionate about, is the sport of soccer. Soccer in Germany is by far the most followed sport, and some followers take it so far that they dedicate their whole life to the sport, and the particular club they are supporting. Most of my life I spent the same way, being a true supporter of my hometown team, Hamburger SV, but ever since I moved to the United States, my passion for my bellowed team slowly seemed to disappear.

            Soccer is the most popular sport not only in Germany, but also in most parts of the world. Most followers choose their team due to a variety of reasons. Since most of the people are loyal to only one club at the time they inherit their team of choice from their members of the family. In my case, I chose to support my hometown team, because of the city I was born into, and because my father has already been a strong supporter of the team ever since he moved to Germany. Therefore, like every strong supporter, I used to collect fan supplies, watch every single game of my team, and try to go to the local stadium as much as my pockets allowed. In my own thoughts there was no way on earth that that could change, even by moving into another country.

            Nevertheless, after my arrival to the U.S, my passion slowly began to fade. All of the sudden I was thrown into a completely new world with a completely different culture and, indeed, completely different passions. Growing up in a western culture, I did not expect the U.S to be too different from Germany, but my views rapidly changed upon my arrival. Thrown into this new world of change, I was overwhelmed with learning the new culture so much that I entirely forgot about practicing my own native culture. In the beginning, I was still trying to keep track of what was going on back home, especially in sports, but soon I had to realize that I was being confronted with a true issue, the loss of my passion.

            After a short period of time, I began to realize that my interest for soccer and its weekly results began to decrease. In the beginning, I still tried in vain to keep on following at least my hometown team’s results, but only to realize that I was losing interest. In the States, people have so many things to choose their interest from, that I was entirely overwhelmed by the variety of sports people pay attention to. I could not keep up with my own interest. Moreover, I began watching sports that I have also been passionate about, but never had the accessibility of watching like basketball. After realizing what happened to my passion after all, I was not upset over the loss of one sport because I had the chance to learn so much more about life and culture in Chicago.

            Every country has its own definition of what passion is to them, but one thing is universal, the loss of a passion can truly be an eye opening but also an alerting loss. Once people are passionate about something, they hold on to it so strongly that they blank out everything other than their passion and might miss the chance of finding other own interests. I experienced an identical situation that caused that change of passion. However, overall my well-being remained satisfied because despite the change I went through, I might have lost one passion but have won many more.