She sat there, discussing her latest situations with adults and children with a sore arm, and a cup of coffee she sips so carefully. She resists throwing herself in a negative zone as she sees my worry; that she may lose her confidence about what she’s doing drove the conversation into what made her passionate. She then paused for a slight minute, and said,

“But more than anything, I know we can’t waste time because the kids have no time. We don’t have time to figure this out when the kids only have a certain amount of time in their own right.”

In the last couple of days, I’ve had the privilege of being exposed to various personalities and their mental drive. I’ve spoken with cameramen / producers of digital film, entertainment media mavens, writers, artistic directors, teachers who are soon-to-be-administrators, and even watched superstars with points to prove and heroes who’ve lived many lives discover themselves in an unknown instinct within them. All of them have this internal gasoline set to different degrees of heat, ready to set a fire ablaze at any point. Their fires are all very distinct: some give off smoke and light the place up at its mere presence; others prefer to have a cool, focused aura about them, and whether or not people know they’re there, people understand that person’s importance in what’s going on there.

But they all seem to have this common thread: their work has little to do with how many people saw it or how much money they’re making off of it or even how successful in the general sense that product is. It’s more about the impact that one move has on everything else from there on out. It’s the means to the end, not the end itself. The end, which for some is defined and for some not as clearly, is a destination that they feel they’re reaching through their actions.

These passionate people, in one way or another, convey a pain, a suffering they try to emanate in one single moment, and while everyone that supports them celebrates their astounding achievement, they squint their eyes and clinch their mouths at you like, “I know I’m not done.”

What makes you passionate?

Jose, who writes with a kettle of boiling water in his stomach …