“Finding Our Passion in a Time of Grief”

Wheaton College Honors Convocation Keynote Address (May 5, 2022)

Source: Wheaton College

On May 5, 2022, I was privileged to deliver the keynote speech at the Wheaton College Honors Convocation, which I titled, “Finding Our Passion in a Time of Grief.” This was the first Honors Convocation held in person since the COVID-19 pandemic. A video of my speech is available at: https://youtu.be/YaLTMvbyF4Q?t=658

The full text of my address is below:

Finding Our Passion in a Time of Grief

Sometime in January of last year, I had an epiphany while standing in my son’s empty bedroom in the mid-afternoon: I was a ghost and I was haunting my own house. The bedroom was small, about the size of my office in Knapton, with a shiny hardwood floor and bare, newly painted cream-colored walls. All the furniture in the room was empty and waiting to be used: the bookcase, the drawers, the white IKEA crib with a bare mattress, the rocking chair that had once belonged to my late grandmother. I sat in that chair, sank back into the cushion, and silently watched the rays of the winter sun darken from gold to copper before it sank below the horizon.

Let me go back a bit. In the summer of 2019, I left the city of Macau in southern China, where I had lived with my wife and our infant son. I had just accepted a new position here at Wheaton College. After six years of living overseas, it was finally a chance for me to come back home to Massachusetts, where I was born and raised. When I arrived here, I was alone, but I wasn’t worried. I expected that it would take a few short months for my family to get through the immigration process before they could join me in the States. But, then, three months turned into six, then twelve, then sixteen, and then I stopped counting. The COVID pandemic meant that I could not travel abroad to visit my family, and so we had no idea when we would be reunited. We exchanged photos and videos nearly every day, but I could not help but grieve. I was grieving for having missed my son’s first year, his first steps, his first words. I was grieving for time that I knew I would never get back.  

I want to talk today about grieving and loss, but also about love, and passion, and some of the ways in which they are inseparable from each other. Let me start with passion. It wasn’t all that long ago when each one of you was agonizing over your college application essays. If you were like me, you probably received some advice about the importance of “finding your passion” and emphasizing to admissions committees just how passionate you were about playing the piano, kicking a soccer ball, painting, debating constitutional law, or writing anime fanfiction. To do something with passion was to enjoy it. And implicitly, that meant doing it with a focus and determination that promised future academic and career success.

Over the last several years, there’s been a backlash against the notion that students should “find their passion.” The counter-logic goes something like this: “telling students to pursue their passion is bad advice. What you’re enthusiastic about at 21 won’t necessarily be what you’re enthusiastic about at 35 and frankly, just because you’re passionate about writing anime fanfiction doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be able to pay the bills with it. It’s better to be ‘practical’.”[1]

Then there is another view that I think has become more prominent over the past two-and-a-half years, which basically asks: “How can one talk about finding one’s passion when we’re living with the constant threat of a pandemic, or the threat of war or political unrest or climate change? How can one talk about finding one’s passion when the world is on fire and we’re exhausted, anxious, and dispirited? How can one find passion when every day is Blursday?

To answer this, I think we need to reassess how we understand passion. Our modern understanding of passion is bound up with notions of romantic love. William Shakespeare depicted Romeo and Juliet’s ultimate expression of passion as dying needlessly for one another—their good sense having been consumed by a fatal case of hormonally induced ardor. Oddly enough, our culture seems to believe that this sort of reckless enthusiasm has something to do with finding a fulfilling career. I did a Google search for the words “passion” and “career” and found 634 million results.

Let me offer an alternative perspective. Passion isn’t just enthusiasm. In his book, Forgotten Among the Lilies, the Catholic priest and spiritual author Fr. Ronald Rolheiser describes a fundamental passion at the heart of human nature. He writes: “We are fired into life by a madness that comes from our incompleteness. We awake to life tense, aching, erotic, full of sex and restlessness.”[2] What Father Rolheiser means is that so much of what we strive for in this life is driven by a sense of un-fulfillment and incompleteness. He describes this as the fundamental dis-ease—not disease but dis-ease—of the human condition, what he calls “the holy longing.” It is against our nature to remain at rest for long. At a place like Wheaton, this restlessness can appear as a drive for achievement, a striving to do better in our learning and our research and our teaching. We see it in the drive to create justice in our communities. These are all to the good, but there is also a dark side: stress, frustration, a sense of inadequacy or inferiority. Nevertheless, these manifestations of our dis-ease are inextricably linked to our unending quest for wholeness, for an affirmation that our existence matters despite our smallness in this universe.

Looking at passion from this angle suggests a different and older understanding of the term, one that derives more directly from the Latin word passiō, which means “suffering.” In the late second century, Tertullian, a Christian theologian from the Roman province of Carthage in modern-day Tunisia, used passiō and its various cognates to describe the sufferings of Jesus on his way to the crucifixion.[3]Thinking of passion as suffering illuminates how love demands sacrifice. Sometimes, that sacrifice manifests as work. Sometimes as the risk of losing that which we love. By opening the floodgates of our hearts, we also open ourselves up to the possibility of disappointment, rejection and heartbreak. In love, whether love of a person, a vocation, or a dream, the risk of heartbreak always accompanies the possibility of consummation. The motto of Wheaton College is “That they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” To live an abundant life is to live with abundant love. To live with abundant love is to live with abundant passion. To live with abundant passion is to open one’s heart to the possibility of joy, but also of pain and grief.

I’m especially aware that today marks the first Honors Convocation since the start of the pandemic in which we are physically gathered together in the same space. Some might say that it’s another sign that we are returning to “normal.” There is some truth to that, but I also know that there is no going back to what we had before the pandemic. Collectively, we have been scarred in ways both large and small, visible and invisible. Some of us have lost a sense of smell or taste. Some of us have lost loved ones. Many of us continue to wrestle with the demons of loneliness, anxiety, and uncertainty about what we once took for granted as stable and unchanging. There has been grieving, sometimes grieving in anger—over the loss of precious time with family and friends, long-anticipated travel, rites of passage like weddings, graduations or moving away to college for the first time. There has been grief over the destruction and senseless loss of life in Ukraine, the seemingly endless ways in which people do violence to one another both at home and abroad, and the ways in which information and stories can be so easily twisted and conscripted into the service of dehumanization. It is important not to deny this grief or be embarrassed by it. To deny our grief is to deny the truth that the people, places, opportunities, and lives that we grieve are precious to us. We grieve because we love what we have lost.

What does grief have to do with passion? Here, I know that I am treading on sensitive, perhaps even sacred, ground. Whatever you are grieving, that’s dear to you. It is not my place to tell you how to grieve what you have lost. Instead, I simply want to offer an observation: the things for which we grieve can give us important clues as to what we are truly passionate about.

If we recognize that the potential for suffering and grief is contained within love and passion, then the question, “What are you passionate about?” becomes much more profound than a career choice. Instead, it asks: “For what joy will you willingly open your heart? For what purpose will you willingly assume the burden of suffering and grief?”

In just under two weeks from today, my family will mark the one-year anniversary of our reunion here in America. In that time, I have been growing into my role as the father of a very energetic preschooler. The silence that had haunted me at home for my first two years here has been replaced with the sounds of running feet, raucous laughter, and the occasional scream of pain when I step on a stray LEGO. Our anxiety over the immigration process has been replaced by more mundane concerns, like “whose turn is it to do the dishes?” or “how can we get our son to sit still long enough to finish his dinner?”

I still grieve for the time that I lost with my family, but I realize now that the grief of our separation gave me a visceral clarity about my priorities. When I finally hugged my wife and son at Logan Airport, it did not erase the grief of the lost time, but I nevertheless felt a surge of calm purpose. I knew where my passion lay, and therein also lay the potential for a new bursting forth of life.

May we have life. May we have love. May we have passion, even when it is accompanied by the grief and suffering that mark love’s labors. And may we have it all abundantly.


[1] Cf. Ben Horowitz. “Don’t Follow Your Passion: Career Advice for Recent Graduates,” (May 28, 2015), Columbia University. https://a16z.com/2015/05/28/some-career-advice-for-all-you-recent-graduates/

[2] Ronald Rolheiser, Forgotten Among the Lilies: Learning to Love Beyond Our Fears (New York: Random House, 2007).

[3] “passion, n.”. OED Online. March 2022. Oxford University Press. https://www-oed-com.wheatonma.idm.oclc.org/view/Entry/138504 (accessed March 26, 2022).

“Human Dignity and Catholicism in the Philippines” now available in the edited volume “Human Dignity in Asia” (Cambridge)

My chapter, “Human Dignity and Catholicism in the Philippines”, was just published in the edited volume Human Dignity in Asia: Dialogue Between Law and Culture, by Jimmy Chia-Shin Hsu (Cambridge University Press). It is also available in electronic format through Cambridge Core.

For a limited time, you can purchase the book at a discount from Cambridge University Press using the coupon code “HSU2022” (without the quotation marks).

The concept of human dignity differs from that of human rights in important ways. The notion of human dignity precedes that of human rights and recalls the famous observation of Jacques Maritain, one of the key drafters of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, that “we agree on these rights, providing we are not asked why. With the ‘why,’ the dispute begins.” The concept of human dignity implies an answer to the “why” of human rights, but that answer varies across different cultures.

How is human dignity understood in Asian societies? The chapters in this volume systematically survey Asian approaches to human dignity through philosophical, legal, religious, and socio-political analyses. Chapters cover India, Japan, China, South Korea, the Philippines, Indonesia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Singapore.

My own contribution examines the Catholic Church’s understanding of human dignity and how the Catholic hierarchy has sought to apply it in the Philippines. I focus on several issue areas, including capital punishment, contraception, poverty, and electoral fraud. Catholic doctrine teaches that all people possess intrinsic dignity because they have been created in the image of God (the imago Dei), thereby imposing certain moral principles regarding the treatment of oneself and others, including solidarity, the preferential option for the poor, and the sanctity of human life. The Church’s application of these teachings in the Philippines has taken on distinct local characteristics shaped by high levels of societal poverty, economic inequality, and corruption, as well as the Church’s historically strong political influence. The Catholic bishops have harnessed the concept of human dignity to point out dehumanizing practices in Philippine society and call for greater respect for the sanctity of human life. In recent decades, though, the Church’s moral authority in the Philippines has been severely challenged by changing political dynamics, revealing the limits of its ability to promote Catholic teachings on human dignity.

Quoted in the South China Morning Post on Myanmar and the Rohingya Genocide

I was quoted in the South China Morning Post in an article about ASEAN envoy Prak Sokhonn’s visit to Myanmar.

https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/politics/article/3171581/asean-envoy-wraps-first-myanmar-visit-five-point-consensus

Jonathan Chow, an assistant political science professor at Wheaton College in Massachusetts, said acknowledging the atrocities committed against the Rohingya was essential to establishing an authoritative historical record, and in dealing with misinformation, denial, and efforts to erase the identity of the Rohingya people.

Chow said an important step towards changing the junta’s calculations would be to impose a worldwide embargo on the sale or transfer of arms to the country’s military. He cited the report released last month by Thomas Andrews, the UN Special Rapporteur for Human Rights in Myanmar, which noted that China, Russia and Serbia had all supplied categories of weapons to the junta since the coup. These include fighter jets, armoured vehicles, rockets and artillery that have been used to attack civilians.

In June last year, the UN General Assembly passed a resolution calling for member states to “prevent the flow of arms into Myanmar”, but it is non-binding.

“But such an embargo has not been forthcoming due to the likelihood of vetoes by China and Russia,” Chow said, referring to the two permanent members of the UN Security Council who share close ties with Myanmar.

PacNet Commentary: “Myanmar’s Military Arrests the Civilian Government–and Democracy”

Leif-Eric Easley and I have published a new article in this week’s PacNet Commentary, produced by Pacific Forum. In this analysis, we examine the factors that led to the February 1 arrest of Myanmar’s civilian government by the military. We also discuss what this critical moment will mean for Myanmar’s democratization, human rights, and relations with China going forward.

Renegotiating Pariah State Partnerships: Why Myanmar and North Korea Respond Differently to Chinese Influence

Myanmar State Counsellor Aung San Suu Kyi and Chinese President Xi Jinping at the Great Hall of the People, Beijing, China, May 16, 2017. (EPA)

Leif-Eric Easley and I recently published an article in Contemporary Security Policy, titled “Renegotiating Pariah State Partnerships: Why Myanmar and North Korea Respond Differently to Chinese Influence.”

Pariah status for violating international norms over decades increased Myanmar
and North Korea’s dependence on China. Myanmar’s post-2010 reforms sought
to reduce international sanctions and diversify diplomatic relations. North
Korea pursued a diplomatic offensive after the 2018 Winter Olympics, but
only after declaring itself a nuclear state. Why, despite both states’ politically
unsustainable dependence on China, did Myanmar and North Korea pursue
different strategies for renegotiating reliance? Unlike the Kim regime,
Myanmar’s junta could step back from power while protecting its interests.
Pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi was a credible signaler of reforms,
providing Western governments political cover to reduce sanctions. Myanmar
used liberalizing reforms to address internal threats, whereas North Korea
utilizes external threats for regime legitimacy. The theoretical underpinnings
and empirical trajectories of these distinctions–as well as Myanmar’s
backsliding on human rights–explain why reducing reliance on China may
prove more difficult than shedding pariah status.

Myanmar’s Democratic Backsliding in the Struggle for National Identity and Independence

Leif-Eric Easley and I have a new article published in the July issue of The Asan Forum. In “Myanmar’s Democratic Backsliding in the Struggle for National Identity and Independence”, we assess Myanmar’s democratization and why the consolidation of democracy has stalled. The key, we argue, lies in Myanmar’s unfinished nation-building and a struggle over whether to define the polity in civic terms or in ethnic terms.

Be sure to check out the other contributions to the Special Forum on Democratization, National Identity, and Foreign Policy in Mongolia, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Myanmar, with essays by Sophie Lemiere, Ralf Emmers, and Mendee Jargalsaikhan, along with an introduction by Gil Rozman. All articles are freely available on the Asan Forum website.

“Persuading Pariahs” was Pacific Affairs’ #1 most downloaded research article of 2016! NOW FREE!

“Persuading Pariahs: Myanmar’s Strategic Decision to Pursue Reform and Opening”, by Jonathan T. Chow and Leif-Eric Easley, was the #1 most downloaded research article from Pacific Affairs in 2016!

Access the article via Ingenta (UPDATE: NOW FOR FREE!)

Abstract: 

Myanmar’s liberalizing reforms since late 2010 have effectively shed the country’s decades-long “pariah state” status. This article evaluates competing explanations for why Myanmar’s leaders made the strategic decision to pursue reform and opening. We examine whether the strategic decision was motivated by fears of sudden regime change, by socialization into the norms of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), or by the geopolitics of overreliance on China. Drawing on newly available materials and recent field interviews in Myanmar, we demonstrate how difficult it is for international actors to persuade a pariah state through sanctions or engagement, given the pariah regime’s intense focus on maintaining power. However, reliance on a more powerful neighbour can reach a point where costs to national autonomy become unacceptable, motivating reforms for the sake of economic and diplomatic diversification.

Keywords: Myanmar/Burma, China, ASEAN, sanctions, pariah states,
authoritarian transitions, Aung San Suu Kyi

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5509/2016893521