Shared passions

Today I was on my way to the train station listening to the podcast Fatman Beyond. It’s a podcast hosted by one of my favourite directors and one of his good friends, the writer, Marc Bernardin. They were chatting with the guy who controls the BB-8 droid on the set of the most recent star wars films. So I was pretty lost in my ears. And I find myself looking quite intensely at a man’s t-shirt as he walks past me. It was a star wars shirt with an X-wing on it, done in an old comic book style. Then this same man takes his headphones off and points at my shirt and says amazing podcast. It just so happens I was wearing a weekly planet t-shirt. This podcast is all about nerdy stuff similar to Fatman on batman but hosted by two Australian guys (can you tell I like a good podcast?). I was a little stunned at first as it made me realise just how much I was staring at his shirt. But then I was overwhelmed with a sense of happiness. This person I had never met before and will probably never meet again already had loads in common with me because not only did he like the podcast but he must have liked something they talk about, and I like basically everything they had to say. It was nice to get recognition from a fellow fan.

I kept thinking about this encounter whilst on the train and it made me look at my relationships with people and it made me realise just how important shared passions can be. For example my girlfriend had only ever seen a handful of marvel movies before meeting me. Once she discovered how much I adored them she wanted to watch them too. So in what were possibly the best months of my life, we would watch maybe one film a week. Flash forward to the release of captain marvel and she was up to date, she could come see this film with me and it was a brand new experience we could share. And then avengers endgame came out and the second time I saw it (first time was with my dad as we always do midnight releases for avengers), I was with her and not only was it another shared experience but if you’ve seen that film (and judging by the box office it looks like everybody has) you can guess it was a bloody emotional one. I was crying like a child that santa forgot, but even better, so was she! That’s how invested she had became in these films and it meant the world to me that we could both cry like children together over this thing we loved.

One of the best conversations I’ve had was with one of my best friends that I now refer to as Nightman (ah-ahhhh). Where we spoke for a solid ten minutes about our favourite cereals. We both got so passionate about it. You would have thought we were in the cereal business or something. But alas we just really like cereal.

So if you’re passionate about something go out and talk to somebody about it. Or better still, strengthen a relationship by going and exploring somebody else’s passion. If you end up liking it then that’s something else you can share and personally, talking to people that love the things you love is one of the best things in the world.

See you later

P.s Dayman is better than Nightman