My wife and I spent Memorial Day Weekend in a small town in central Washington to go birdwatching in the Toppenish National Wildlife Refuge. And devoting an entire three-day weekend to birding felt like a perfectly normal thing to do, but three years ago, I couldn’t have imagined such a thing. Now, I’m obsessed with birds.
So what happened? And what does this have to do with becoming better?
The story of how I became a bird nerd reveals the importance of trying new things, how passions are developed, and the way curiosity makes your life far richer.
How We Got Into Birding
Flash back to winter 2021. We’re in the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic, still social distancing, no vaccines yet. Like many people, we were using the time to explore new hobbies.
At the time, I had no interest in birds, but we were into a board game called Wingspan. The game, which is all about birds, inspired my wife to try birding in real life. She bought a book and some binoculars, and we began looking for interesting birds while walking in the park.
The timing turned out to be excellent.
The park behind our home goes down to Lake Sammamish, where a wide variety of migratory waterfowl spend the winter. We’re not talking about everyday mallards and Canadian geese; we’re talking about really cool waterfowl. Beautiful, unique, weird waterfowl. Cormorants, buffleheads, mergansers, grebes, coots, and ring-necked ducks.
Hooded Merganser
How Birding Became a Passion
Binoculars turned out to be essential because you can’t make out the subtle details of their plumage from far away.
We would see these birds from the beach, try to identify them, and then read about them in our bird book. I was surprised to find myself interested in learning about the birds. And the more I learned, the more I wanted to learn.
I was even more surprised how thrilled I was whenever we saw a new species. The first time I saw a wood duck, I was so excited that immediately yelled “WOOD DUCK!!!” which, to my dismay, scared it away.
Wood Duck
In the spring of 2021, we made a trip to the Nisqually National Wildlife Refuge that really sealed the deal. We saw countless new and interesting birds, and our love for birding grew into a full-blown passion.
You Don’t Know What You’ll Be Passionate About
The point here is not that you should get into birding (though obviously I do recommend it). The point is that you don’t know what you’ll be passionate about. (You can add this to the list of problems with asking kids what they want to be when they grow up.)
You have to try things. If they’re a little interesting, keep doing them. If your interest grows, continue exploring and practicing. Through repeated engagement, you will discover and cultivate passion for the activity.
Your engagement in the activity and your interest feed off of each other in a self-reinforcing cycle:
With birding, something I was willing to try turned into something I was casually interested in, which grew into a regular hobby, which has since become a meaningful passion.
Passion Comes Through Depth
You also can’t be passionate about something you only know a little about. You can be interested in it, but you won’t develop passion until you’ve spent more time with it.
One reason for this is that the more you learn about something, the more you realize that there is to learn. The truly interesting features of any domain are in the details. It’s nuance and depth that creates and feeds passion.
Scratching the surface won’t suffice. You have to dig deeper.
A Passionate Life is a Good Life
A life without passions is a boring life.
Having hobbies you’re passionate about makes your life more meaningful and more joyful. You’ll use your spare time learning, exploring, and growing, rather than consuming addictive media.
Plus, by becoming a person who is more interested in the world, you’ll become a more interesting person.
No one is born passionate about playing piano, skiing, botany, painting, or woodworking. Those who are passionate about such things became passionate through repeated engagement.
So if you’re lacking passions, don’t be jealous of people who have them. Try stuff. And if you like it at least a little bit, keep coming back.
Odds are, you’ll start to like it more and more.