“And this difference of quickness (of thought) is caused by the difference of men’s passions; that love and dislike, some one thing, some another; and therefore some men’s thoughts run one way, some another, and are held to, and observe, differently the things that pass through their imagination.”
– Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan
I don’t know if Hobbes nailed it here, but it seems to be one of two possibilities:
- we’re better at things we’re passionate about; or
- we’re passionate about things we’re better at.
Actually, there’s always the old standby third possibility:
- some mixture of the two.
If we marry Hobbe’s explanation (or either of the two alternatives) with the idea that we go toward pleasure and away from pain, I think we could explain a lot about how people build their lives, even if they seem to be drifting the whole time. They are good at some things and less good at others. Their passions (to use Hobbes’ word; I think it’s a bit strong) push them away from some things and draw them to other things. That defines the people, events and opportunities they find themselves exposed to. As they go through that they make more — sometimes unconscious — decisions, which lead them down the path of their lives. When we look at them from the outside we wonder how they found or missed some opportunity. They were (to use a communications theory) oriented wrong. They were looking in the wrong direction, they were listening to something else.
Certainly, other people have an influence on the process, but sometimes I wonder if it’s nothing more than being a catalyst: you don’t like me, so I go in another direction, toward someone who does like me or shares my passions, etc. And if the exception proves the rule we have the perverse desire for the unobtainable person to be the exception. I have no idea how that works.