Vicarious

ca-thar-sis n. the process of releasing, and thereby providing relief from, strong or repressed emotions

vi-car-i-ous adj. experienced in the imagination through the feelings or actions of another person

Since a young age I have always been infatuated with the concept of passion. Not just in the physical sense, but the ethereal being that drives us to commit incredible acts, that gets into our guts and makes our skin almost rip off of our bodies. The type that you can feel in your blood, that hides behind anger, lust, sadness, anything that is stronger than we are. Passion is what drives us; it means the difference between a mistake and a regret, something done, and something committed.

Passion is a beast from which we cannot hide. It waits deep within us, hoping to claw its way out, poring into our bloodstreams like a toxic chemical, a drug that is self-medicating, silently waiting to tear our insides to shreds, leaving us breathless and scared. It uses everything we have, every molecule of our being to meet its ends. It feels no pity, only strength.

This infatuation passion and I have shared is a tough battle of dominance. It is a sort of drug, always pumping in my blood, waiting for me to let it loose, wreak havoc on my insides. And I let it. In controlled doses I let passion, in whatever form it may take, completely envelop me until I feel nothing but a single emotion—anger, fear, lust, love, excitement. I feel one thing, concentrated and true, one of the purest things left into which I can tap. These moments are fleeting: small doses of a thick drug. They never last more than a few seconds, but when they are done, I feel empty. When passion leaves, I feel empty.

So like any junkie, I find other ways to experience this catharsis. I take it from others, silently stealing the emotions, feeling passion vicariously. I share in the anger of a scorned woman, the lust of a fictional character, the all-encompassing depression of a songwriter, the love of a cookie-cutter movie romance. I need these things, as though without them I cannot feel at all, as though my own emotions are not good enough. I need the extremes to feel like I’m feeling, to feel like I’m living.

Without passion life is just a series of events without a cause or motive. Emotions are just weak feelings, quickly becoming dormant and subdued. They have no strength, no colour. There is suddenly no motive behind any act; the man behind the curtain is revealed and he is sad and sick.

Passion is what makes us who we are. We are defined by how we react in these moments, fleeting and short, but shaping who we will become, how we view the world. And for some of us, these moments are not enough. These short, significant bursts are too short, too weak. We need this passion to make us feel. We define ourselves with passion, rather than letting passion define us. We seek it, instead of letting it seek us. We are junkies to a drug we create; we live vicariously because we feel as though it is the only way to live. Our emotions are not enough.

For us, life is best lived vicariously.