The one thing that all of the people in Time’s December 26 issue had in common was passion. People walked into situations where they could have felt pity (or fear) but instead felt anger at the system and wanted to do something about it.
One of the best paragraphs comes from the introduction of Bono, Melinda, and Bill:
“This is not about pity. It’s more about passion. Pity sees suffering and wants to ease the pain; passion sees injustice and wants to settle the score. Pity implores the powerful to pay attention; passion warns them about what will happen if they don’t. the risk of pity is that it kills with kindness; the promise of passion is that it builds on the hope that the poor are fully capable of helping themselves if given the chance. In 2005 the world’s poor needed no more condolences; they needed people to get interested, get mad, and then get to work” (45).
What will you be passionate about in 2006? What will you do with that passion?
Posted by Heather Voss at December 31, 2005 06:37 PM