Wednesday, June 08, 2005

Obsession?

Yesteday, Eli took a "Martial Arts for Children" book out of my hands.

"No more martial arts books for you," he said. "You're obsessed."

I do have a tendency to get VERY into things: horses, LOTR, for example. But I wonder, Is writing about TKD on this blog causing me to be obsessed? Am I obsessed?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What is obsession? Is it merely a heightened period of interest in a new discipline, or is it an unhealthy level of activity and mental energy directed towards something non-constructive?

Perhaps it is just a word that describes the point at which your family and friends really get bored with your new hobby.

Somehow, until the neuro-psychologists started poking around our lobes, nobody had really figured out that absent mindedness and hyperactivity were just two different sides of the same mental characteristic. I'm convinced that most politicians and corporate presidents are undiagnosed ADHD. The same magnificent obsession that energized Edison through 10,000 failed filaments must have seemed horribly, horribly tedious to his family (perhaps the coconut on his Mrs' noggin was actually self-inflicted?). If Madame Curie was obsessed, at least she found a like-minded individual to share the journey. Would dinner at their house have been tedious, or fascinating?

Poor Mr. Toad and his string of obsessions. If the circumstances had been different, if he hadn't been a poor rich boy with more money than he could spend (at least initiallY), would he have directed his energy to founding a dot com? The respected Professor Toad of the Mechanical Engineering Department at Cambridge?

Ultimately, obsession must come down to self-identification and life values. Has 'what you do' become the foundation of 'who you are'? Naming a blog after a hobby is probably a start, but it isn't totally worrisome--at least not before the vanity plate stage.