Passion – Day 1

The cupcake thing started the summer of 2002.

“Come to New York,” my daughter Nichole insisted. “We’ll go to the park, go shopping. And you’ve got to try these cupcakes I’ve discovered,” she said. “Fluffy, white, vanilla cake. You can choose the color frosting you want: blue, green, yellow. It’s just a tiny bakery,” she said. “But those cupcakes. You can smell them a block away.”

“A block away?” I thought. After a few conversations, I could smell them across the country in my California home.

“They sell thousands of cupcakes each day,” Nichole said. “Some people need their cupcake fix so bad they have a fit if they can’t get the color they like.”

“Mail me some,” I said.

“I can’t,” Nichole said. “They’ll melt.”

I couldn’t stop thinking about those cupcakes. I started telling friends about them. And I hadn’t even tasted them yet.

“You’re driving me nuts,” a friend in Minnesota said. “After our last conversation, I drove to my neighborhood bakery, bought two cupcakes, then went out to my car and ate them—right there in the parking lot. Would you stop with the cupcake thing?” she asked.

I couldn’t.

I had a break in my schedule, so I decided to visit New York for the Fourth of July. When I arrived at my hotel, Nichole called and asked what I wanted to do. I only had two days in the city.

“Get cupcakes,” I said.

“I think they close early today,” she said. “It’s a holiday tomorrow.”

“Then let’s run,” I said.

We made it to the bakery thirty minutes before closing. I walked down the street, oblivious to everything except the vanilla cake with butter-cream frosting melting in my mouth. It was as good as I had fantasized.

Maybe better.

I called my friend in Minnesota.

“Mail me some,” she begged.

“Can’t,” I said. “They’ll melt.”

The summer ended. My daughter returned to Los Angeles. She called one afternoon to invite me to a barbeque.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

“Baking cupcakes,” I said. By then, I had a copy of the bakery’s cookbook, which included the recipe for cupcakes. I had passed the recipe to Minnesota friends. They had fallen in love with them too. I brought the cupcakes to the barbeque.

“These are the best cupcakes I’ve ever eaten,” one guest commented.

The Magnolia Bakery in New York was started by a group of people who were dissatisfied with their lives, quit their jobs, and decided to do something they had a passion for: baking.

A little passion can go a long way.

Don’t be so quick to judge everything as obsession. Don’t be afraid of that fire in your heart. Sure, we run the risk of getting obsessed. And sometimes we go to extremes. But passion makes life more interesting and fun. Passion is the secret to almost every success story I’ve heard.

Value: Passion is the value this week.

From the book: 52 Weeks of Conscious Contact

The post Passion – Day 1 appeared first on Melody Beattie.