Interest

Interest is by definition investment. Since you have a limited amount of time and energy, you have a limited degree to which you can be invested in anything.

Interest requires definition. You cannot acquire a definition in experience without also acquiring a set of things the object of interest is not. If you are interested in chocolate, you are also aware of to what degree that chicken isn’t chocolate. If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice. Every time you make a choice you establish both an interest and a disinterest. It’s the only way you can decide.

In the conflict between what you mistake for will and imagination, imagination always wins. So it’s either use your imagination and find interests, or accept interest from external sources and your imagination uses you.

“There are two levers for moving men: interest and fear.” Napoleon Bonaparte (French General, Politician and Emperor 1769-1821)

“We talk on principle, but we act on interest” Walter Savage Landor (English Writer 1775-1864)

“A person with a hundred interests is twice as alive as one with only fifty and four times as alive as the man who has only twenty-five” Norman Vincent Peale (American Protestant Clergyman and Writer, 1898-1993)