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Transitoriness Of Certain Interests


Since our interests are always connected with our activities it follows

that many interests will have their birth, grow to full strength, and

then fade away as the corresponding instincts which are responsible for

the activities pass through these same stages. This only means that

interest in play develops at the time when the play activities are

seeking expression; that interest in the opposite sex becomes strong

when
instinctive tendencies are directing the attention to the choice of

a mate; and that interest in abstract studies comes when the

development of the brain enables us to carry on logical trains of

thought. All of us can recall many interests which were once strong, and

are now weak or else have altogether passed away. Hide-and-seek,

Pussy-wants-a-corner, excursions to the little fishing pond, securing

the colored chromo at school, the care of pets, reading

blood-and-thunder stories or sentimental ones--interest in these things

belongs to our past, or has left but a faint shadow. Other interests

have come, and these in turn will also disappear and other new ones yet

appear as long as we keep on acquiring new experience.



INTERESTS MUST BE UTILIZED WHEN THEY APPEAR.--This means that we must

take advantage of interests when they appear if we wish to utilize and

develop them. How many people there are who at one time felt an interest

impelling them to cultivate their taste for music, art, or literature

and said they would do this at some convenient season, and finally found

themselves without a taste for these things! How many of us have felt an

interest in some benevolent work, but at last discovered that our

inclination had died before we found time to help the cause! How many of

us, young as we are, do not at this moment lament the passing of some

interest from our lives, or are now watching the dying of some interest

which we had fondly supposed was as stable as Gibraltar? The drawings of

every interest which appeals to us is a voice crying, Now is the

appointed time! What impulse urges us today to become or to do, we must

begin at once to be or perform, if we would attain to the coveted end.



THE VALUE OF A STRONG INTEREST.--Nor are we to look upon these

transitory interests as useless. They come to us not only as a race

heritage, but they impel us to activities which are immediately useful,

or else prepare us for the later battles of life. But even aside from

this important fact it is worth everything just to be interested. For it

is only through the impulsion of interest that we first learn to put

forth effort in any true sense of the word, and interest furnishes the

final foundation upon which volition rests. Without interest the

greatest powers may slumber in us unawakened, and abilities capable of

the highest attainment rest satisfied with commonplace mediocrity. No

one will ever know how many Gladstones and Leibnitzes the world has lost

simply because their interests were never appealed to in such a way as

to start them on the road to achievement. It matters less what the

interest be, so it be not bad, than that there shall be some great

interest to compel endeavor, test the strength of endurance, and lead to

habits of achievement.



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