Finding your soul

My newfound infatuation with skiing has me pirating hundreds of gigabytes of high-definition ski movies. The most recent that I watched was called "In Deep" by Matchstick Productions (imagine searching for that on The Pirate Bay). I try to  avoid Warren Miller movies because they seem less like compilations of sick runs and more like ninety-minute religious recruiting videos for some snow-centric cult.

I watched a few minutes of "Children of Winter," a 2008 Warren Miller film. The movie seemed pretty good, but the frequent narratives of skiers and snowboarders over epic footage came off a little preachy. Every single one of these extreme athletes seemed to feel the need to legitimize their job by mentioning their "passion" and the "soulfulness" of "pow sessions" and the importance "living in the moment." 

I'm okay with all of this, and I can relate some of those feelings to mountain biking, but the elitist writing between the lines seems to say "you are a pansy-ass douchebag, your job sucks and you will never know yourself until you're sponsored by Red Bull to take hundred-thousand dollar, high-definition heli-skiing journey into the soulful and inspirational Alaskan wilderness." Or maybe that's just my jealousy talking.

I'm afraid my job doesn't have the everyday wow or the adrenaline-rushing flair of an adventure skier's run down a powder-filled chute. The thrill of dusting off ancient audio/video systems doesn't exactly compare to eighty-foot cliff jumps at seventy miles per hour. I'm not saying that I want to be a freeskier, but I wouldn't mind a little bit of passion for my job. Is it too much...to ask for a little bit of soul?