A Passion for 'Wobblies'

I read The Orchid Thief not too long ago. I had seen Adaptation when it came out and found it to be intriguing, disturbing, over the top, memorable . . . The car accident scenes stunned me. With no foreshadowing, they were so real and all the more powerful for their shockingness.

The book, however, mostly depressed me. Not that it wasn't good or interesting or intriguing in its own right. I learned a ton about orchids and the heretofore unknown (to me) world that orchid lovers inhabit. I didn't have to force myself to finish it. I just reacted to it on a very personal level.

Passion. What am I passionate about? I can't identify anything. Laroche's passions were all-consuming and fleeting. They weren't presented in a flattering or attractive light. And yet, as I read the book, I continued to feel that my lack of passion suffered in comparison.

Orleans spends much of the book in a similar place, being "fascinated by (passion), partly because [she] never . . . had that kind of devotion to a single interest." But, in the end, she is redeemed in that she realizes that she too has a passion, "the passion to be a writer and reporter." Her discovery left me even more alienated. Where I thought throughout the book that I had an ally, in fact I was alone in my passionlessness.

I am an analytical being. I have a hard time taking a strong position on issues because I have the ability, the affliction, to argue multiple sides of an issue. I see all the complexities and sometimes envy those for whom these things are simple and straightforward (one of whom is my husband).

Last September, NPR’s This I Believe, aired an essay from Ted Gup, “In Praise of the 'Wobblies.'” “I always seemed to stand in the no-man's land between opposing arguments, yearning to be won over by one side or the other, but finding instead degrees of merit in both.” Here was someone giving voice to me. I was excited. I immediately emailed the link to my husband. “See, it’s not only me!,” I was telling him.

Being a “Wobbly” is part and parcel of my struggle with passion. Perhaps I do have a passion. Perhaps my passion is my thirst, my desire, to know. Not a desire to know the answer but to know things, to know stuff, to see all sides.