So there's this blogger I love on tumblr who is incredibly intelligent, witty, and just awesome. She's so knowledgeable on so many different topics and I admire her for it. Her main topic of expertise is mythology. She writes myths, reblogs posts about myths, makes jokes about myths, and since she's so smart and funny I just want to be in on the jokes, to understand what she's writing about and experience for myself how awesome mythology is. So I checked out a book from the library about mythology, and it's really quite dense and...thorough. I've been trying to enjoy it, but it just can't seem to keep my attention.
Then I came to the (somewhat obvious) realization that it's easy to be knowledgeable about a subject that you love. For example, I know quite a lot about John Keats, and I want to learn everything there is about him and his work. It never gets old for me. The same goes for women in literature and culture. That stuff is fascinating, and I'm passionate about it. So I kinda realized that that's how this person must feel about mythology, and that's why it's so easy for her to read and write so many myths and be so consumed in them, just like I can become so consumed in things that other people don't enjoy. For example, I spent a good hour last night trying to teach myself to write in iambic pentameter. I had a blast, but most people would have a crap time doing the same thing.
In conclusion, I realized that I shouldn't be jealous of other people's passions, because I have my own. I will be most successful if I'm doing something I love, rather than trying to get myself to enjoy something I don't. That being said, I am going to continue researching mythology, but I'm not going right into Robert Graves' Greek Myths. I think I'll start with one of those children's books, like Percy Jackson. I'm a beginner in that topic, so there's no shame. Meanwhile, I'll save the dense, intellectual texts for Romantic Era poets, Shakespeare, the Bronte sisters, and women's rights.
No comments:
Post a Comment