A Spark by Innocent Mwatsikesimbe from The Vision, chapter 72

There’s a plain test for what you actually value: imagine losing it. Dread means it matters; relief means it never did. Innocent’s version is to “flirt with the idea of losing it” — and the truth about how you relate with the thing surfaces on its own.

The same test explains insecurity. It arrives only where something you value is at risk, never over things you don’t care about. It works on life itself, too: you love yours when mortality is a fact you can embrace and still hate.

What passes the test shows up in how you behave. You spend time on it, guard it from people with bad intentions, and can’t entertain the thought of losing it. For him that’s his work — a passion being “something you cannot imagine living without, and something you are willing to die for.”