Bren, both a friend and mentor in the WFU Entrepreneurship Office sent this to me yesterday after reading “The Quantum of Solace.”

It’s a poem by Edgar Best.

Never by many are marvels wrought
By one or two are the dreams first caught
The dreamer must toil when the odds are great
Must stand to failure, and, work, and wait
Must keep his faith though he stand alone
Until the truth of his dream is known.

I’m not usually a poem person, but this is an exception. Thanks, Bren.

Passion is overused and frequently misunderstood.

I was used to regarding the term passion with lame chick-flicks and overly-emotional people. The worst incarnation of passion arrived when people demanded of me emotional investment when I had no deposits to make. So, needless to say, I’ve never thought of myself as a passionate person because I linked passion with those unfortunate circumstances.

But, as the Geico commercial with the movie voice guy says, “a new wind was about to blow.”

This week I was in a situation where I made a conscious attempt to approach my goal solely with fact and rationality. I assumed that my desire to succeed would shine through the facts, the analysis I gave to them, and the conclusions I spent a good deal of time deriving.

Wrong.

While the presentation went off well, feedback I received afterwards told me that I seemed colorless and even may have shot myself in the foot.

That, in a word, sucked — because I wouldn’t be where I was right now without the desire and color and drive to make my vision reality.

And as I thought about it, I realized that passion isn’t really a bad word per se. I, until this week, misunderstood its true meaning. I didn’t apply it to my own context, my own frame of understanding.

What’s the takeaway? Passion doesn’t have to mean long walks on the beach or roses and chocolates. It means what you want it to mean. It means doing what you love. And if it’s something you love, never make excuses for it. That is you.

As a follow-up to “The Quantum of Solace,” my last entry (which, consequently, is also the title of a James Bond short story), here are some relevant quotations.

“This is your last chance. After this, there is no turning back. You take the blue pill - the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill - you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit-hole goes.” – Morpheus, The Matrix

“Every person who wins in any undertaking must be willing to burn his ships and cut all sources of retreat. Only by doing so can one be sure of maintaining that state of mind known as a burning desire to win, essential to success.” – I can’t remember.

There’s a certain degree of comfort one must have with oneself, his ideas and capability for action if one plans to have any success doing something unique, great, out of the ordinary, and worthy of praise.

I’ve inherently always known this, but it’s been heavily driven into me by the exposure and situations in which I’ve found myself over the past few weeks. In no other time have I faced so much potential and opportunity. It’s like God decided to put together some packages of sunshine, box them up and deliver it to my door early in the morning. Waking up to opportunity — abrupt opportunity, as it is — is a product of one’s environment, quality of insight and understanding why one is where one is.

If light is one extreme, then darkness is the other. One’s quantum of solace with oneself, especially on the path I’ve chosen, is incredibly important when navigating the storms that are inevitably faced in pursuing one’s dream.

I’m reminded of what Jack said in the first episode of Lost, when he’s talking to Kate about performing surgery and almost killing the small girl on whom he’s operating. He said something like “I was scared, but I wouldn’t let the fear control me. I let myself be afraid for 10 seconds, then I set about to work. I saved her life. Nobody ever knew how close to death she was.”

I admit I’ve been pretty low over the past few weeks, let the fear / doubt / disappointment / discouragement run its course, then looked towards the sky and got moving again. It’s fun, exciting, but requires perseverance.

One aspect of this persistence is knowing why I’m here, what I want to do, and gauging the buckets of advice and input that come my way every day. It’s understanding the motivations of those around you while not being overly concerned with it. It’s balancing what you want with a willingness to compromise and veer.

So what should be your takeaway from this post? Learn to know yourself and how far you’re willing to go to do what you want. Once you know that, it all falls into place. Really, I promise.

**Special thanks to Kyle Collins for sending me this email and prompting me to begin writing again! The email is as follows: “Seriously man, when are you going to give your avid readers an idea of what is going on with you in boston!?”

He’s a great guy. Blackbaud, you should promote him tomorrow.