Passion

Today's ST carried an article about a 28 year old tattoo artist who after carefully weighing the risks involved went ahead to Sydney to have his eyeballs tattooed. Other than the high risk of infection which may lead to loss of sight the procedure is irreversible. . The procedure involves injecting coloured ink into the sclera  to colour the white of the eyes. Even the eye tattooist himself would caution his clients especially the younger ones about their life time decision which may affect their prospects when attending job interviews.

Something in a remark made by the 28 year old man strikes me. He said he had to do it remarking "It was just on my to-do list". It makes me ponder whether a "to-do list at 28" is way more compelling than say a to-do list at middle age or later. Does the to-do list varies at different stages of our life? Or is it just an attribute of the level of passion we are born with? What was mine at 28 or did I even have one? Wait a minute. What is the definition of a to-do list? Oxford's definition is "A list of tasks that needs to be completed, typically organized in order of priority". I guess at middle age and later you will have to add the words "before I die" into the above definition. So is the urgency more pronounced  in later years than earlier. My gut feel is it is irrespective of age and stems from personality traits. An impassive person will always have the seemingly unachievable list no matter the age. I guess that's why I can't even remember whether I even had one at 28 or perhaps even now.

Thus despite how crazy I think this guy was, how I feel he never contemplated sufficiently the consequences of his actions, how it is beyond me a person can so nonchalantly decides on an irreversible action; there is something in him that strikes me , something which I know is lacking in me, something I can take a leaf off from his book.

His Passion (misplaced or not)