Passion: The Vital Ingredient in the Quest for Salvation?

Abstract

Earlier in this book one of us admitted to a passion for food: for reading about, for watching TV shows on, and for working with, different ingredients and different ways of preparing and presenting food. Being passionate about food is something that we have no trouble understanding or identifying with. Both of us, in different contexts, would also admit to a number of other passions: particular practices, behaviours, people, and objects that provoke in us a range of emotions and feelings and rationalizations. Now is probably not the place to go into what some of those might be. However, being passionate about certain things is something that can make us feel alive, responsive, excited, energized. Being passionate about something can get you out of bed in the morning and keep you going throughout the day — or night. Passion in this sense need not be a positive, nice thing. Passion can also be about anger, violence, aggression — passionate football supporters spring to mind here.

Cooking is the most massive rush. It’s like having the most amazing hard on, with Viagra sprinkled on top of it, and it’s still there twelve hours later.

(Gordon Ramsay, cited in Bill Buford, 2006, Heat,p.79)

I believe that you have to have a passion for what you do. Now I want to run my own restaurant. Fifteen has helped me believe that I could actually achieve this. I also want to learn by example and use my restaurant to help other young people and give them the opportunities I’ve been given.

(Georgina, Fifteen trainee, 2004, quoted in Fifteen Foundation, 2007)