Generation is not creation

There’s a kind of intensity about certain workplaces that seems like a joyless imitation of passion. As a musician who truly loves the craft, no matter how many hours, days, or weeks it demands in a studio, I can spot the difference between authenticity and artifice. People can be very intense about something they do not actually love. They can guard it, regulate it, moralize it, and spend themselves on it without ever delighting in the thing itself. They don’t have what is normally meant by “passion”. Instead, they conflate what they experience with what is normally meant by “passion”. They defend something they believe is better than its alternatives—but that is not passion. Passion is not the generation of something, nor is it its defense. Passion is bound-up with creation, and creation begins with inspiration almost ex nihilo. Creation begins with a desire and ends with satisfaction of that desire. Only living creatures are capable of this. Insofar as someone is not involved in this process, they are acting out of a deadness of spirit—regardless of their intensity.

Generation is not creation. Life is not a matter of its own preservation.