I’m a new reader of your blog and am thoroughly enjoying the content of your posts, but I have something to ad…I agree that interests are usually more passionately pursued as a result of mastery, but the relationship between passion and mastery, and mastery and positive feedback is more tenuous when talking about “passions”. I think that sometimes our passions, once based on mastery, are less related to the actual subject and more related to the social capital it gives us to be well-versed in something. Just my opinion, but I think it’s worth evaluating why you really are pursuing something so much more once you receive positive recognition. After all, you want your passions to be yours and not just related to other peoples ideas of what is a valuable or useless pursuit.

For example, a friend of mine studied French for many years, but once Spanish became a more fashionable language to learn, she felt as though she’d dedicated her efforts to the wrong language. Obviously, learning any language is a fabulous thing, but she was so concerned with how her skill was perceived by others that her passion (that WAS facilitated by her gradual mastery of the language) turned into regret for time wasted once it was no longer deemed fashionable.

Just a thought.

I agree that arranged marriages can work.

However, I think there are is a great deal of cultural attitudes, expectations for marital success and others that weigh into their success. So, I disagree that pursuing things strictly on a mastery basis (while ignoring inherent attraction) is the ideal.

-Scott

Many studies show that arranged marriages often start out less passionately, and are less satisfying than marriages that occur out of the Western conception of “love”. But, over time arranged marriages become more passionate, and more satisfying than typical Western marriages. They are also more successful in terms of divorce rates.

I think we can become passionate about almost anything given the right circumstances (or in the same way, interested in almost anything). I actually think that actively pursuing something you are passionate about or interested in is a mistake, because you end up forcing passion through habit or cognitive dissonance. I’d rather just do, and if I become a master of something so be it. Isn’t it more about the path then the destination?