Have we discovered our interests or are they imposed on us?
The individual and their environment
I like to think I have varied interests that make me unique. I write. I hike. I follow sports—particularly Denver-based teams. I obsess over the intersection of tech and media and UX. I read certain books, watch certain movies and TV shows, and engage in seasonal activities like skiing and scuba diving. Hobbies! Love to have hobbies. And as far as I’m concerned, having hobbies is good.
Why though? Why do I think having hobbies—the more the better, to a certain point—is good? Certainly plenty of fulfilling lives have been lived prior to mine in the absence of hobbies. I guess I was raised to believe it, then. By my parents, by my environment, by the society which groomed me into a productive contributor. Directly and indirectly, I’ve been taught my whole life that it’s valuable to apply your time to concrete pursuits, even the portion designated as “leisure.” It’s more useful to spend an hour on a ski lesson vs. applying that same hour towards watching a TV show at the lodge.
So here’s the thing: if this mode of operation is what I’ve learned, did I really choose my interests? Or were they imposed on me by a mostly invisible credo that guided my body and mind toward what seemed most likely to round out a life the surrounding environment upholds as ideal? Let’s pick apart each one.
Writing: to some extent I’ve been drawn to it my whole life—I’m curious about words, I enjoy stringing them together, I like to think about which combinations will get a certain point or feeling or concept across best. This seems to play well in a messy world, even if on its own it pays like shit. There’s value here. Perhaps more importantly, my mom is exceptionally skilled with words, across many languages. There’s no doubt her skill influenced me in multiple ways.
Hiking: no one in my immediate family likes this quite as much as I do, but I did live in Colorado, an outdoor Mecca, until I was 15. Then I moved to another one in California. I love connecting with nature and exploring mostly untouched areas, and my environment quite literally guided me into this interest.
Sports: like I said, I lived in Colorado until age 15, so I was locked into Denver fandom by the success of the professional teams based there while I was a kid. Furthermore, I played a bunch of sports in youth leagues (basketball, baseball, hockey), which as any parent knows was a good way to get me to exercise, learn how to cooperate, and be watched by someone besides them for a while.
Tech/media/UX: coming out of college, I entered the workforce based on the assumption that I should apply my core skills (writing/editing) to a space that 1) valued them, 2) had interesting problems to solve, and 3) enabled me to establish independence (salary, healthcare, etc). I stumbled around trying to find the balance here for a while—frankly I’m still searching for it—but in general a tech boom and the rise of smartphones and apps and new forms of media over the last decade have absolutely shaped my professional journey.
Books & movies & shows: I make lists of all of these that I want to consume based on what’s recommended to me directly by people I know, and indirectly through whatever I follow/read on the Internet. I’ve built up a taste over time, but what is it based on? My own preferences, or what feels satisfying to have read/watched?
Skiing and scuba diving: I’ve always joked that I picked up skiing (at age 24) as a way not to miss out on a trip that my lifelong skier friends take to Copper Mountain in Colorado every year. The joke is the reality. Now I ski! As for scuba diving, this appealed to me as a way to be active on any warm-weather vacation near a massive body of water. So as not to go crazy sitting on the beach for too long. Because apparently there’s such a thing as relaxing too much on vacation.
So. What have I learned? That each of the above interests, if not outright imposed on me by my upbringing or environment, at least met me halfway on the road between organic and inorganic affinity. That the accumulation of all of these does make me more unique than identification with just one of them would, but that there probably are still quite a few writer-hikers who work in tech/media/UX, follow Denver sports, like similar content, and occasionally ski and scuba dive. This is a pretty interesting realization to experience. Especially in America, a country whose citizens take great pride in and viciously defend individualism—a fact our technological and governmental institutions know precisely how to tap into to facilitate mass movements. I won’t dive too deep into that rabbit hole here, as it’s probably worth a whole article unto itself, but suffice it to say that the Internet is a pretty powerful tool if you want to make a bunch of people staring at a screen by themselves do the same thing. And increasingly sophisticated AI will only make this manipulation more precise.
Anyway. A lot of my handwringing here is clearly borne out of a desire to be hyper individual and unique and unlike anyone else. And the irony is that I already am that—all of us are. But we are also, at the exact same time, very much like others in very obvious ways. Assuming different permutations of a personality by tacking on different interests and hobbies and loud positions about common problems is what we all do, consciously or unconsciously. Even the attempt to zoom out from this behavior to see it with absolute clarity (an impossible task) is probably a manifestation of the longstanding desire of humans to reach the Archimedean point (objective truth) over and over and over again.
So, who knows. All of this could just be overthinking. Or maybe there’s really something to it. More likely, as with all such questions, the answer lies somewhere in between two extremes. And perhaps the best way to pursue it is just to drop it and sink into whatever interest has caught our fancy at this moment.
Hope to diversify you even more to pick up gardening as well , but maybe when you are older ..
Also a nice reference to your previous post on tv; that reminder answered my question of what you meant by your own preferences vs what feels satisfying. It’s a finely drawn distinction, and it sets up your own terms of discussion