Refuse To Choose!

So far, the best advice you’ve been given has probably been, “You can do anything. Just choose one of your talents and get started.”
That was also the worst advice.

Every single thing she sees or thinks of sparkles with potential and pulls her attention. She wants to do them all. But she’s totally stuck and ends up doing none of them. She might as well pick up the cleaning and head for the market. She sighs and walks outside into the fresh air and remembers she wanted to go for a run today. Her dog, who has been lying on the floor nearby, gets up to follow and wonders what’s bothering her. So does she.

his book is a personal homecoming for me, too. It’s a signpost that I’ve come full circle in my life, from the freshman who wept with joy at finding those amazing subjects in the college catalog so many years ago, to the senior who reads and writes and travels and has a very fine time with her dozens upon dozens of interests. And maybe I did put one thing I learned in college to practical use, after all: I found out what it’s like to want to learn everything

Through the years, when friends or fellow students inquired why I was taking classes, I could never explain. I felt caught and a little ashamed. The prevailing attitude was that “perennial students” like me were lazy or immature, wouldn’t buckle down, wouldn’t do the “hard stuff” required of more serious people. I understood by then that I was supposed to study something I could ultimately put to use, but the thought of narrowing my focus and burying myself in one field of study was unspeakably depressing. I never seriously considered it.

Now that I’ve grown up, I realize that all that delicious dilettantism pays its way as much as any degree in medicine or engineering, by making me remember every day—whenever I pick up a book or watch the Science Channel or try to read a map of Asia for no particular reason—that life is amazing and there is no end to the wonder of it.

Since then I’ve come to believe you don’t always have to use things you love, and it’s not always so practical to be so practical.

I would still sometimes get tears in my eyes because I was actually here in this unexpected universe where people loved learning just for itself.

couldn’t understand why they kept having exams at all. It was quite enough to simply discover that there were so many astonishing things to learn about.

If you have any trouble finding what your favorite activities have in common, go back and make a list of the things you are not interested in

What do you really want to know about this area of interest?
What would you most enjoy doing with that information (if you had a magic wand)?
Who would you love to talk with about this subject if you could talk to absolutely anyone?