I’ve been thinking about passion.

Not the Instagram version of passion. Not “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life!” because honestly, whoever invented that sentence has never had a mortgage.

I mean actual passion.

That strange, consuming feeling when something or someone makes you feel more alive. When you lose track of time. When you care so much that it almost makes you uncomfortable.

How many of us actually feel that?

And do we even know what passion feels like anymore?

Maybe we call our jobs passion because we’re good at them.

Maybe we call our relationships passion because we love the person.

Maybe we call our routines “life” because we’ve been doing them for so long we’ve forgotten there was ever another option.

Wake up. Work. Answer emails. Buy groceries. Pay bills. Exercise. Make dinner. Scroll. Sleep.

Repeat.

Congratulations. You have successfully completed another day in the Matrix.

And perhaps the strangest part is that nobody necessarily forced us into it.

We built the Matrix ourselves.

We followed the rules. Got the degrees. Took the jobs. Bought the things. Raised the kids. Became responsible. Became successful.

And somewhere along the way, perhaps we stopped asking the most inconvenient question of all:

What actually makes me feel alive?

Not productive.

Not successful.

Not admired.

Alive.

Maybe passion isn’t something we find.

Maybe it’s something we have to notice.

And maybe the real midlife crisis isn’t buying the convertible.

Maybe it’s waking up one morning and realizing you’ve been living a perfectly respectable life that you never actually stopped to choose.