It’s Not Mania

One of the things we so often lose as we become adults is enthusiasm.

I was reminded recently of this while reading The Pilgrimage by Paolo Coehlo. In it, the guide tells the pilgrim that enthusiasm is the most accessible version of agape love, and yet, it is still something that most of us are disconnected from. This was not exactly something I had ever connected to agape, and I was a little surprised and even perhaps underwhelmed by the writer’s assertion that enthusiasm = agape. I use agape as a beacon; in my mind it is huge, all consuming, great. Enthusiasm (initially) seemed a little, wah-wah. 

But I’d really gotten so much out of the rest of this book, so I started to get curious about why I personally felt so let down by the link between enthusiasm and agape. The narrator talks about how most adults are completely disconnected from enthusiasm, which we all had in abundance as children. This resonated with me, and in fact, threw light on a narrative that I have about myself which I realise has been neither true nor kind to myself.

For some reason, I associate enthusiasm with mania. I have an internalized aversion to enthusiasm in myself, because I have a narrative about myself that goes something like this, “I can get really enthusiastic about things, but then I get way too intense and then my enthusiasm flames out and there’s another thing I didn’t follow through on.” This is followed by, “It is much better to be even-keel, realistic and measured in all my actions. This is what is acceptable. Enthusiasm looks bad on me.”

There are a few things here.

1. Recognition of the narrative allows me to reflect on whether it is true or kind. In the case of this narrative, I can say for certain it is not kind. I am not sure about whether or not it is true – but again, this doubt about its truthfulness is in itself unkind.
2. I can reach back into my past experiences and begin to see where this kind of narrative came from:
   1. I grew up in a family where the people I looked up to were measured, realistic, and valued showing up without emotional variability. I felt different to this – I always felt like it was harder for me not to be emotional, not to get excited about things, and so I worked very hard to adopt hyper-realism and hyper-logical reactions to things.
   2. As an adult, I spent so much energy repressing my ‘big’ emotions that my methods of repression coupled with my unexpressed emotions resulted in a full-blown, medical-grade burnout (*see a few examples of my own methods of emotional denial below*). 
3. I can begin to see that even though I have consciously shunned enthusiasm, many of my actions still have been guided by it (unconsciously). For example, my enthusiasm for art and history guided me to complete a degree in medieval art history, right when I “should” have been focusing on the early stages of my career. Later on in my life, I “should” have stayed in a lucrative, high-visibility career, but instead my enthusiasm for personal human development and the pursuit of spiritual connectedness guided me into coaching.

This is all still conceptually new for me, so I’m just beginning to peel back this onion on my relationship with enthusiasm. I am asking myself, what if I were to welcome and cherish my enthusiasm for things? What if I stopped trying to repress and channel it into more realistic actions? What if, instead of decoupling enthusiasm and logic, I considered them as mutual helpmates? Would I indeed be experiencing agape in a more accessible form – a form I have been denying?

What about you? What is your experience with and perspective on enthusiasm? Do you engage with it or do you have a hard time accepting it? What are your thoughts about it being a version of agape love? Let’s chat about it together in the comments.