The Things We Love

I think we all start giving up things we love at some point in our lives. Something gets in the way or we change our lifestyle for someone. Whatever the reason, everyone at some point gives up something they once were, they once loved doing, they once knew how to do. And the reasons why people change are all different.

I've been surrounded by friends and family members that all have done that and, through someone else pushing them back into it, they are just not rediscovering the love they once had for it, whatever it is. And even I, myself, have rediscovered lost treasures in my life. So I thought why not go into examining some of those instances, some of the things that my friends have given up and are now doing again.

Too Much To Do
The most basic reason, though not the most common, for giving up something you love doing is that you just do not have the time or the energy to do it anymore. Projects and exams, deadlines and extra classes, and even having a family can just get in the way. And we wager it, the time it takes to do the thing we love and the amount of pleasure we get out of it. Somewhere along the way, we judged that it was worth dropping and forgetting because we had something else that was more important or more pressing.

For me, this is always reading. I love to read books and I love that feeling when you reach the end of the book and feel like you have been somewhere and learned something you did not know before. But I'm a slow reader, and reading is not as much fun to me as watching television or movies, playing video games, or even just socializing with friends. So when the time came to choose school work and one of the things I do for entertainment, I dropped reading because it just did not have the same value as the other things. That is not to say there are not other reasons, but the main reason for me was that I just did not have the time to devote to picking up a book like I once had.

About two weeks ago I decided to rectify this, picking up a book I had bought sometime in the pass year and opening up the cover. I was surprised, shocked honestly, how quickly I became surrounded in the writer's world, trying to understand what was going on and where everything was going. And all it took was more than enough time to figure out that I had the time to read.

Because Something Made Us Forget
To forget what made us love something is different than to have something interfere with it. This is when someone or something else forces you to do something you love but in a timeframe or to do too much of it, to be crushed by the thing you love to the point that you start hating it.

I dedicate this to another friend that told me in confidence that she had forgotten what it meant to really read what you wanted to. After eight plus years of school telling her to go read a book and write and essay, go read and understand this, and go read this chapter and recite it, she just hated reading. Then, one summer when there was nothing else to do, her boyfriend at the time told her to open a book and read. She was resilient to starting the task, those old pains like scars across her body as a reminder of what can happen when you do it, but then she started and remembered that there can be a lovely touch to it as well. I think we sometimes forget that the things that bring us pain can also bring us great pleasure, it just depends how it is applied.

Similarly I've thought for years that I hated hiking or walking around town. It's honestly a surprise for anyone that knows me, because that does not sound like me at all now. Before a couple of years back, when I met a different lifestyle that made me realize how relaxing a walk or a hike can be and how much fun stretching your legs and climbing a mountain can feel, I use to cringe at the thought of walking a few blocks to the store or walking to class. Then I went to college, no car and a hatred for biking (which I use to also love, say for an individual that has made me cringe even to this day at the thought of riding my bike) that left me with one thing to do, walk. Now, I have to say I was a little bit resistant to the idea at first, not wanting to move to far or anything like that, but then I met a bunch of friends that were actually lazier than me. When you stay inside all day, your joints get painful and you just have this need to move. I started walking everywhere, and with the get-heatlhy lifestyle that my university supported, I slowly regained my love of walking. Now I love walking everywhere and I actually cringe at the idea of driving short distances to get a bag of bread. It just seems like a waste of gas, and I'd rather spend my gasoline driving longer distances and enjoying the road.

Because Someone Made Us Hate It
This sort of is a smaller branch of the previous reason, where literally another person made us think that we did not like it because they did not like it or they made doing it harder. I can't begin to say how many people have caused me to stop doing things I once loved, to stop even trying and making me shy away to the thought. And the worst part is that there is no way to learn to love it again except to have someone force you to do it the way you once did.

I always think of my Mother when I think of this. She used to love cooking, experimenting with spices and flavors each night to see if she could come up with a recipe that tickled her taste buds. Then she had a family, and her family was all picky-eater males. We did not like this, we were disgusted by that. I can give examples for every member of my family that just crushed her, ruined her want to try cooking new things or cooking harder recipes. From me it used to be mushrooms, broccoli, peppers, onions, chicken, mexican, and just about a hundred other things I disliked. For my little brother it was nuts, mushrooms, cheese, tomatoes, and a few other things I'm probably forgetting. My older brother always hated nuts, most types of meat, and basically anything else that could not be found in a cereal box. I'd like to note now that while we were just children, and children can be picky eaters then, all of us have gone through a rebirth for the love of different foods and all of us pretty much downed our lists of things we hate to one or two items. And even if we dislike them, that does not mean we won't eat them now. For instance, I hate corn, but that has never stopped me from eating it straight on the cob.

But the truth is that the real killer to this whole experience was my Dad. He hates cheese to the point where if we added it in anything, he would stop eating and walk out of the room in disgust. And he hates butter, which is the most basic ingredient in just about every dish ever made. And he hates cream. If you combine those three things alone, which is my nice way of saying that there is a much longer list of things he will not touch, then you basically wipe out ninety-five percent of the things my Mom loves to cook. And he is not a boy anymore, he will never grow out of these hatreds, and he's stuck being sour about sour cream. It kills the creative spirit when you can't experiment with someone like this.

But I did something for my Mom, I went to college and I went through a food revolution. I tried everything and anything that people offered me, taking food not by the taste but by the serving. What I learned is that I did not hate all the things I thought I hated, but in fact I loved them. I came back from school with a yearning for more on my tastebuds than the eight or nine dishes my father approved of. And in one night, one simple time when he left the house for supper, we cooked and she remembered that there is a whole world of things out there she can make. Since then, my Mom has started cooking again.

Overall
It really is hard to remember why you loved doing something, why you stopped, and what gets you started again. But I think the best thing to remember is who gets you going again, that person that forces you to tip the edge of your own disliking of the thing you once loved and get back to doing it once more. It is about being open-minded, about trying new things, and about being optimistic. That's what gets us back to the things we love.