I get stuck on limited interests. I hold on to them for too long and I need a way to get new interests. It can be hard to do that. Our lives become defined around a narrow range of interests. What most people call interests are actually habits of interest. Habitual choices you make often with little or no reference to your personal state of being. Now don’t get me wrong, habitual interest is not automatically bad.
So the interest is art and your habit is painting. You could try drawing or photography and feed the same interest, or try water colours instead of oils. Yes. Ones interest can often broaden without sabotaging anything one was previously interested in. Often times, the old interests don’t require nearly the energy people put into them. This is why they find them so unsatisfying.
I find the interest goes away when you feel you have learned all you can about it. It can go away, yes, but that again is a habit. Human beings have a need for novelty, at the same time defeating their instinct to find novelty at any turn.
Habits of interest based on self awareness and personal development are life affirming. Other interests are often life draining. This is why it’s so common to hear those supposedly successful people pondering where their whole life went.
Ultimately, interest is an art, and art is the only interest. By art, I don’t mean the crafts that people consider expressive. Any element of life can be expressive, but people fail to recognize life as a creative medium. The really inspired minds that are so famous today are often less interested in what they can gain from what they do, then they are interested in the changes they can make in the world and what impact that will have.
Evolution is art. Indeed, evolution is art. I will offer a definition of art versus science. In science, one question has one answer. In art, one question has many answers. Evolution is the question, “What is life?” The outcomes of evolution are manifold. Many forms of life arise from the life question. Questions are quests. Quests are potentials to do work, which means questions are energy.
I have always found that art and science were similar in that they both are seeking truth. They both can be, yes. Good science has a component of art in it, and the best art has an element of science in it as well. The great natural philosophers were also artists. They had to figure out how to draw just about everything under the sun, even things they could only imagine.
Science seeks the truth of the physical word, and art seeks truth of the emotional, but both require honesty.
Your thoughts are welcome. Be well friends.
Travis Saunders
Dragon Intuitive
~science,mysticism,spirituality~