Puttin’ the Oomp! in Passion!

Nothing! Nix! Nein! Nada thing compares to the man or woman who lives and breathes passion in what they do.

I was listening to a sailor talk about the jobs on a ship―the Enterprise…or today, the USS Enterprise―and sat right up... my inspiration for this post. Immediately I was struck by the passion as he explained the importance of each job on the ship.

It took me back to teller work, nothing like teller work today, and true, nothing like teller work in the early 1900’s... recalling teller work explained in books like ‘The Panic of 1907’ by Bruner and Carr.

I thought about my brother, once awarded the best ‘big rig’ truck driver in Philadelphia. My brother loved driving trucks. He’d been driving since he was 12.

It took me back to Nile Rodgers book ‘Le Freak’: An Upside Down Story of Family, Disco, and Destiny. This was the first, and so far the only full-length poetic story that successfully rendered a page-turning experience. Of course, Nile writes music. In his memoir he broke down the DNA in the making of music.

Marcus Thompson’s How Do Rumors Get Started: The True Story of Timex Social Club, independently published, was another exceedingly passionate memoir on the making of music. Larry Kane's Philadelphia by Larry Kane, My Times in Black and White: Race and Power at the New York Times by Gerald M. Boyd via Robin D. Stone, Between You & Me by Mike Wallace, The Kitchen Sink Papers: My Life as a Househusband by Mike McGrady, From Beirut to Jerusalem by Thomas L. Friedman, Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea by Barbara Demick, and now Desperate to Be a Housewife by Meg Bortin; all journalists, all spell out the love rooted in their work through their remarkably passionate biographies and memoirs.

There are many instances, aside from the passion written in books…& reading books, where this love is demonstrated in what a person does for a living. Be it a military officer, scientist, car mechanic, sports player, or working in medicine; weather you are a corporate executive, politician, pastor, artist, or an avid reader like me… No matter what it is, knowing your stuff… the why you do it and how you do it, and can’t think of nothing else but doing it... is puttin’ the Oomp! in Passion!

A passionate mind is an intelligent mind, exactly how I spell SMART. And Yeah, I said it! And so did Tim Leberecht in the Business Romantic.

Know your stuff. Own What You Do.