What are your passion(s)?

[Ian Curtis]

"What's your day job?" had varied and fascinating responses, and "Why you will fail to have a great career." has also gone viral. In his talk and especially in the follow-on videos posted in that thread, Prof. Smith goes into great detail about the importance of having a career that lets you pursue your passions.

So, what are your passions? Do you get paid to pursue them? Or is there something you do outside of work that really gets you going?

[Andrew Lawrence]

Nice idea for a thread. I like it.

My passion is to change the world. Make as big of an impact as I can. Do my part in this culture change. That would just be wonderful...

[treffk]

My passion is to inspire our youth to reach for their dreams.

[pfreivald]

I'm a teacher, FIRST coach, beekeeper, and author. (My first full-length novel went up for pre-order on Barnes+Noble like, five minutes ago!)

[Al Skierkiewicz]

I don't know if it is a passion but the thing I like to do the most is passing along knowledge. It doesn't matter if it is just talking about things that have occurred in my life, technical stuff or life struggles. What that implies is that you have to acquire knowledge in order to pass along knowledge. So that leads to two fundamentals that I follow. The first is in my signature below, Learn something new everyday. Now that is a nice saying, it is hard to find any fault in it or any arguable points of view. Simply learn something, anything. Do it today and continue doing it everyday. Implied is the need to pass it along. Don't be selfish, give it freely to others. It is no good to acquire knowledge and then hide it away.
The second is really very much like the first. I met a great teacher once. He happened to have fundamentally the same idea. While studying audio and acoustics under Don Davis, he repeatedly wrote, expressed and included this saying in his work.
I met a man with a dollar, we exchanged dollars. We each left with a dollar. I met a man with an idea, we exchanged ideas. We each left with two ideas.
So it is not only the need to acquire knowledge, it is very important to have ideas. Like knowledge, ideas need to be shared. If we don't share them, we won't know if they are good ideas. Without the ideas, we can't ask the hard questions about the knowledge we have. Without the knowledge, we can't formulate good ideas.
Next in line, is Ham Radio. It allows me to explore RF, communications, antenna design and function, and on occasion to gain knowledge and exchange ideas with people I will never meet.

[Ian Curtis]

Since I wrote this I've asked a number of people this question, and been genuinely surprised by the percentage of lofty responses I've received. I was expecting to get objects or trades in response, like "I'm really passionate about vintage airplanes" or "I'm crazy about ballet" or "I really love the elegance of mathematics." Instead I've gotten a lot of responses about "inspiring youth" or "changing the world", and it isn't just limited to FIRSTers.

But I'm left wondering -- all of the best mentors (be they professional or amateur) had an infectious enthusiasm about something real. They obviously love teaching, but Mr. McCartney is absolutely nuts about Medieval England, Mr. Sid* is enthusiastic almost beyond belief when he teaches the proof of e^(i*theta)=cos(theta)+i*sin(theta), and Karl is willing to build and fly airplanes designed by people with really no idea what they were doing.

Is there a difference between these two themes? Are passions about teaching and passions about objects or trades both passions on the same level? Or is there another word for this seemingly universal desire to inspire and teach the next generation (not that that's a bad thing!)? And if teaching is your one true passion -- how do you get your future students excited about learning and the future without a particular "vehicle" that really gets you, the mentor, going?

Just talking out loud here, very interested as to what other people have to say.

*the lecture where we learned that functions didn't have to be just numbers with f(x)=(x's Mom) was unintentionally hilarious... but I still remember the definition of a function!