Happiness is the absence of the striving for happiness.

~ Zhuangzi

I've been reflecting a bit on my last post, and especially how I had to keep talking myself into working on it, but my mind just refused to "latch on to the task". I'd been playing Caves of Qud on my Switch for some days, and all I could think about was the game1. Last night I realized I frequently go through cycles such as this (cycles of "fever", almost infatuation, followed by disillusionment) and then nothing for a while, until eventually something else comes up and I start the cycle again. These usually happen when I'm just getting to "grok" something. At the beginning of my "adventure" into whatever it is, my mind is more actively thinking about the thing at hand, excited for it, trying to wrap itself around it.

Before CoQ it was another game, "Hollow Knight: Silksong". Before that it was MTG Arena, and before that Hearthstone (both of which offered my mind a lot of "stuff" to munch on as I subconsciously thought about different cards and fun decks ideas).

Games are the most common, I think, but I've also seen this happen with many other things, like my personal projects (some of which I eventually ended up scrapping), or even certain topics (for a while I was very much into Taoism and Tai Chi; now I barely even think about it2).

An interesting point is that sometimes I'll periodically cycle on a given "thing". Come back to it over and over but never really stick with it. An example of this is "meditation". I might have a month or so when I'm really disciplined and enjoying the practice, and then something happens and I get disillusioned with the whole thing, and for six months or so I don't sit at all. Then I cycle back to being "into it" again, and then off, and so on.

This behavior has always seemed interesting to me, though I've never really taken the time to properly question it. Other such "cyclic" interests are learning languages, card games (not always MTG/Hearthstone, though always in a similar vein3), trying my hand at making games (though often I just end up making game engines instead). I'm sure I can come up with more examples, but you probably get the idea.

I guess what I'm trying to pin down is not so much the individual occurrences of this phenomenon, but the fact that this phenomenon happens at all. My wife usually remarks how quickly I get over my interests, and that it's surprising we've been together for so long. In fact, we've been together since high school, and she's right that I'm not even a little bit "bored" by her or our relationship. Interesting, then, that I seem to go through some interests so quickly, while others seem to stick, either cyclically or forever. Why is that?

One other such "permanent" interest, which you can probably guess, is writing. I never get bored of writing, though sometimes I like to vary things a bit between different kinds or styles. However, it's still the same activity, right? Ever since my school years I've been attracted to it, and even though there have been lulls in my practice (often long, multi-year ones), it's still something that always fascinates me, and I keep coming back to it again and again.

What is it that makes these things "stick"? Knowing this would definitely be interesting. It would also be useful, because if I knew what really pushes me to stay with something long term, then I can better understand myself, my motivations, and maybe even how to plan for other things that I want to keep at long term.

I was hoping that by writing about it, the solution would just "pop" into my head, as it so often does. However, it's all a blank. Well, that's not true... An idea just came up that the things I'm permanently interested in are all things that are constantly changing. Things that not only give me near-infinite possibilities but also directly challenge me in some ways or others, that offer some sort of "resistance".

For my relationship with my wife the answer is obvious (all relationships, in fact, are potentially infinite in exchanges and push you to grow). With writing it's a bit more obscure, but I can see how writing itself is an "infinite field," and I can do whatever I want, but at the same time anything I write pushes back on my mind, usually in a way that brings to light parts of myself that I either wasn't clear on or really didn't know existed. Other activities like programming/engineering/building stuff (all of which have been long-term fascinations) also embody these same principles.

Though, thinking about it some more, the "inexhaustible depth" aspect is quite easy to understand, but the second aspect I'm not so sure of. Is it "feedback," maybe? I used the word "resistance" before, and I think that is probably a better term. A resistance in the sense that "the thing" motivates me to keep going at it; it's not boring; the hardness is part of the thing that engenders novelty. Often this resistance is not always the same but changes dynamically as I interact more and more with "the thing".

...

Okay, I think I have a better picture now.

Actually, ALL the things that interest me (permanent or not) have a bit of this sense of "inexhaustible depth," though some more than others. Not all of them have a dynamically changing resistance, though most do up to a point. The disillusionment, the reason why I sometimes leave an interest, can either be because I'm genuinely no longer having fun with it (or something else I'm more interested in took its place), or it can be because I start ruminating on what's really the usefulness of such an interest (a strong attachment is just another tether holding my mind down, and as I realize this I'm inevitably prone to want to stop feeding that attachment), or sometimes I just stop because I know it's in my best interest.

I guess with all these points now it becomes much easier to see why I might stick with something or not. In fact, there's a simple formula:

(novelty through depth + dynamic resistance) - (repetition + guilt at its uselessness + how much it hurts me) > 0

We didn't really find out exactly what this dynamic resistance is, which is still the most unclear "term" in the equation. I didn't talk much in this post about my motivations for "guilt" and "how much it hurts," but they're clear in my mind, and seeing that the post is already getting quite long I'll just omit them :P

The more I think about it, the more I realize I'm thinking of all these things as "games" (in the game theory sense). They are, after all, games that I play, and some call my attention more than others and in different degrees. My (our) whole life is a patchwork of different games that we decide we want to play, whose rules we start playing by and willfully forget there are rules in the first place (or that we chose them rather than having them imposed on us).

Games all the way down.

Footnotes

  1. So good! I love you, Man Opener. ↩

  2. Though it should be said that everything I go through, every interest, marks me for a long time. Even in this example of Taoism, I might not be consciously thinking about it, but it definitely colors my whole experience and the kinds of relations I make with things around me. ↩

  3. Now I'm starting to feel an itch to learn/play Sorcery TCG, though I don't have anyone to play it with. ↩