March 26, 2020 - 195 - "Enthused About Enthusiasm"

Vindication

     I felt so understood this morning!  My whole life I've been waiting to hear these words of explanation and vindication. 

     I was listening to a YouTube video of Earl Nightingale, an early 'self improvement' guru, talking about enthusiasm.  It took a guy who died 31 years ago to reach across the decades with these sensible and beautiful words:

"The saddest days of our lives are those days in which we can find nothing to be enthusiastic about.  I think that you can say that a person's enthusiasm is in direct proportion to the importance of what it is he's looking forward to.

Thus, there are all sorts of degrees of enthusiasm.  People tend to be mildly enthusiastic on Friday simply because it's the last day of the week and they've got a free weekend coming up.  People tend to be more enthusiastic about going home after work at night than they are about leaving for work in the morning.  But the most fortunate people on earth are those who live most of their lives in a state of energizing enthusiasm.

And do you know what the key to enthusiasm is? 
Well, there are two keys, really.  One comes from learning.  The other comes from accomplishment.
Learning new things tends to keep our enthusiasm high.  Perhaps this explains the natural enthusiasm of children.

They're naturally enthusiastic, and they're naturally happy.  The reason adults tend to lose a lot of their enthusiasm for living is that they usually stop learning.

As soon as school's over, they take the position, consciously or unconsciously that they know enough.  Any learning they do from that point on, they do passively through the natural passage of time and experience.  Or, again, passively through the media, newspapers, radio and television.  If new learning comes to them, it does so largely through no efforts or at least minimal efforts on their part.

Learning little that is new or interesting, their lives become repetitious and settle down into well-worn grooves.  They see the same people and go through the same motions every day, and gradually or quickly, all or most of their enthusiasm fades from their lives.

The second key usually ties in with the first, the second key being accomplishment.  It's really hard to accomplish something new without first learning something new, even if the accomplishment is limited to improving one's golf game or making furniture in the basement.  

But we're enthusiastic when we're working on a project we want to complete or master.  The key word there is want.  It has to be something we want very much to do, as opposed to those duties and projects we must do whether we like them or not.

Answers, Finally

Thanks Mr. Nightingale.  I needed to hear that!

     I've taken a lot of flack in my life about being excited about something.  Anything.  For some reason, it's cool to be bored.  People don't want to appear stupid by being excited about something.  It's cool, according to many, to act like everything that ever happens...you've done before. 

    I have never, will never, get this.  I get more excited about taking off in an airplane after being a flight attendant for 28 years than a lot of kids on flights for the first time.  Where did they get the idea that they're not supposed to be thrilled about stuff?

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     Or, I guess really, I should be wondering where I was the day everyone else got this memo?  The day my excitement over things became naive and silly.  

    Nah.

Grateful to Be Uncool

     Anyway, I think the explanation of what keeps our enthusiasm up makes sense:  I am a learner and view all of life as one long experiment.  I'm currently learning how to migrate from a Blogger to a WordPress blog, how to speak Spanish, how to organize my closet better, how to write funnier stuff, how to make my leg workouts more effective...and about a million other things.

    I am excited to learn about these and enthusiastic about hitting various milestones.

    Three Cheers for being geeky and uncool!!  Hoorah!  Hoorah!  Hoorah! 

     I hope you too, enjoy learning new stuff every day and I hope you can't muster a bit of jaded and blase' boredom about any of it ever.

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     Thank you, Earl Nightingale, for explaining my whole childhood!  (uh...and adulthood!)

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"The word "enthusiasm" comes from the Greek word "entheos" which means the God within.  And the happiest, most interesting people are those who have found the secret of maintaining their enthusiasm, that God within."

-Earl Nightingale

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"A great attitude does much more than turn on the lights in our worlds; It seems to magically connect us to all sorts of serendipitous opportunities that were somehow absent before the change.

-Earl Nightingale

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Alive, Alert, Awake
(to the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It")I'm alive, alert, awake, enthusiastic

I'm alive, alert, awake, enthusiastic

I'm alive, alert, awake, 

I'm awake, alert, alive, 

I'm alive, alert, awake, enthusiastic

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