Studying for fun

“You see, if you have an education, you have many sources of pleasure and intellectual stimulation. Ways of using your time.”

- Burjor Randeria, in Paul Theroux’s Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

This is the perfect reason for working hard on learning – you learn so that you can have more fun!

Certainly, nothing can interest (or sustain your interest) unless you have sufficient knowledge on the subject to appreciate and enjoy it. Everything that you don’t know about or don’t understand is one less source of entertainment. An illiterate man is a bored one.

So, life is dull not because there aren’t sufficient forms of entertainment. You have no hobbies not because nothing interests you. If all you know about is your mundane life, then your life will certainly be mundane because you enjoy little more than unimaginative dramas about lives like yours.

Considering that dance escapes me, and that I have two right feet (which I argue to be worse than having two left feet), I’m missing out on the whole field of dance – all that elegant prancing and sensuous movement. Every language and culture that I do not know is one that prevents me from fully appreciating the nuances and witticisms of a film in that language.

Yet, this begs the question: breadth or depth? There seems to be a tradeoff between enjoying many things a bit and enjoying some things a lot. Now, even figuring out how to enjoy life sounds challenging. We have no excuse to be bored.