Quote:
Originally Posted by francstoic  Steve,
Your implicit criticism of people who have only a few interests in life actually makes me wonder how then should one develop other interests?
Now, many might say that interests cannot be "developed" (they need to be in you already, even if latent). But I tend to disagree. But I don't know how to develop interests.
This question actually points to a much broader, relevant and therefore important question: how can I get rid of ignorance/darkness and laziness/inertia? Also, how can I help another person get out of it? Often it is the case that I would like to love topics like history or economics but I simply don't find them all interesting.
How can I develop curiosity and wake out of ignorance and inertia? |
I'm not Steve, but I hope you don't mind me responding.
First of all, I don't think there's anything remotely wrong with pursuing just a few interests, especially with the intention to master them. Mastering any field takes dedication, focus and discipline. All very good stuff.
As for developing interests, I do see where you're coming from. As a person who, for a long, long time, didn't have any outside interests except my music -- I did have to admit that I was being narrow-minded and consumed. Missing out on life and imbalanced.
To develop interest in other fields, I think it helps to understand the underlying theme of what engages us. All of us naturally enjoy learning, growing, being creative -- unless you've conditioned yourself to hate challenging yourself in any way. I consider myself a non-stop creative, so when I saw that there was a lot of creativity involved in other areas besides music -- like business and marketing, for example -- I was very intrigued. Now I consider entrepreneurship a fascinating challenge and an integral part of the portfolio that is my lifework.
Also, keep in mind that schools often do terrible jobs of communicating the essence of some fields. For example, history was never my favorite subject. I hated memorizing dates and names. But history involves a lot of exploring, speculating, solving mysteries. I've really grown to enjoy visiting historical sites, and wonder what it was like to live back then and experience what they went through. I'm always interested in learning "what it's like" from people, so when I discovered that angle I got more drawn in.
So you can see, there are universal currents in many different disciplines. Figure out what ticks for you, and look for that element in new and unfamiliar fields.
Enjoy the exploration! It's a lot of fun.
ari