Passion at Work: How to Find Work You Love and Live the Time of Your Life

Chapter 2. We Aren’t Cats

Your Core of Steel

I was 14, and the world was my oyster: freshman class president, co-captain of the JV football team, sports editor of the yearbook, and making decent grades at a competitive private high school in Southern California. I was training for a marathon, had taken up surfing, was an avid skateboarder, and had enrolled in a local martial arts program. I was also on track to becoming an Eagle Scout in the Boy Scouts of America in near record time. Although my parents were living apart, life was pretty darn sweet. In literally a heartbeat, a minute weakness in a particular cell wall would dramatically change all this forever.

I collapsed during a football game with a Grand Mal seizure and woke to find no sensation ...