User:Echostar/How My Passions Impact the World

"How My Passions Impact the World"

“Our passion is our strength,” Billie Joe Armstrong said. Passions come in many forms. My passion is sign language, and it is like a stone thrown into a river- the world- creating motion that impacts the whole river, one ripple at a time.

I discovered this passion at my local church. While altar serving, I began to watch the sign language interpretation of the service. I realized how quickly I was learning the signs simply through observation. I began to sit with the deaf and hard-of-hearing and soon started to sign with them throughout the service. I was transfixed by the concept of praying with one’s hands. I began to pay attention to the words of the service as I had never done before, for they were shown to me, not only told to me.

As I learned more signs, I was able to use my passion to impact others around me. I began to assist with the sign language interpretation of the service by interpreting certain responses and songs. I taught my classmates how to say a phrase in sign language for a school project. During my school’s ‘Foreign Language Week’ I have signed at the Foreign Language service for the past two years. I have been able to communicate at my church more effectively with two members of the congregation: a deaf elderly woman, and a hard-of-hearing man. Our conversations grow longer as I learn more signs and need less help to clarify a term used or to interpret what I want to say. The words I show to others through signs will impact them, and that impact will be carried to others, and in turn, the world.

Today, my passion impacts the world one-by-one through the work I do. Soon I will have to decide a college major, and how I want to impact the world through my career. I would like my passion to be incorporated into my choice. “There is always one moment in childhood when the door opens and lets the future in,” as Graham Greene said. During a doctor’s visit at Johns Hopkins, I observed a sign language interpreter at work, signing with a patient before his appointment. My path took on a new course. I would like to be a medical sign language interpreter at Johns Hopkins, or at a hospital like it. Due to having my own chronic illness, I would have a unique empathy for patients. I would be an essential part of providing safety and security for a patient in an uncommon and vital way.

The deaf have their own culture, and sign language interpretation breaks down the barrier of communication. Learning the language is teaching me not only about the culture, but about the people within that culture. A few weeks ago, as I was leaving church, the deaf elderly woman waved the sign ‘I love you’ to me from across the parking lot as she was helped into her car. One day I will be the sign language interpreter for a patient, and his doctor may happen to be one of my former doctors. But who knows how my passion will impact the world? It depends on how others are impacted, how their passions are shaped from my actions, and whether and how they will choose to act on their own passions. As Harriet Tubman said, “Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world.”