When a child is born, as it wants to live, it is interested in where or that by which it is to live. So it wants to be of things.
Nearness is the first cause of interest. What the child sees to be about it, it is interested in. It has to be; for its living depends on its interest in what is about it. The child doesn’t know that it is interested in food and air and water, but it is. To be alive and want to live, is to be interested.
Life is always a history of interest.
To be pleased by something is to be interested in it. To need something is to be interested in it. Need is always a presence of pleasure and pain. A need is great in proportion as the pleasure we have in satisfying it is great, and the pain we get in not satisfying it is great, too.
So what pains us is interesting, as far as we see the pain. We are interested in seeing the person we most care for and in getting out of the way of a stone or car coming towards us; it would be difficult to say what we were most interested in: seeing a person we most furiously desire to see, or avoiding a pain we most zealously desire to avoid. It follows that if a person wanted to see a girl called Wilma, and that if to see her meant crossing a most dangerous road, there would be a drama of a kind present. For drama involves a fight of interests.
I used the word of in my definition: what we wish to be of interests us. But all the other prepositions have to do with interest, too. What we are in interests us, if only in terms of how to get out of it. What we are around interests us, if only because what we are around is near to us. What we are by interests us, because what we are by is close to us. What we are against interests us, because we wouldn’t take the trouble to be against it if we weren’t interested. What we are for, quite clearly, interests us; for when we are for something, we have been of it and want to be more of it. What we are going to, it is evident, in some way interests us. What we are from, since this means what we couldn’t be without, interests us, really, most of all. What we go from, in the sense of our wish to leave it, interests us in proportion to the intensity of our desire to leave it. Lack of interest which is utter, changes into great interest; for if something displeases us tremendously, our desire to depart from it is also tremendous; and to make the desire to depart successful, we must be interested in how to do so; and this implies an interest in the thing we are against, or hate, or are disgusted by, or tormented by.
Every moment of our lives involves a question of interest, of for and against, of and not of. It should be seen that in proportion to how much and how well we’re interested in existence, we’re interested in ourselves. If ourselves are small, we know it in a way, and if we consent to the smallness, we may be conceited, but we’re not really interested in ourselves.
The word interest comes from the Latin verb meaning “to be among.” In life, to be at all, is to be among something, or as I said, to be of something. Every self, being of reality, is a form of reality; and how great or beautiful that form comes to be, is in proportion to how great or beautiful its interest is in the reality it is a form of.
There is nothing we do that does not have some relation to interest. To live, as I have previously said, is to be interested in living—which is the same as wanting to live. If we eat, we are interested in eating; if we sleep, we are interested in sleeping; if we dream, we are interested in dreaming; if we are disgusted, we are interested in being disgusted (also in that which disgusts us); if we walk, we are interested in walking; if we hear music, we are interested in hearing music.
What we do with interest is how our lives are. Our interests go deeply after a combination of largeness and fineness. We wish to be grandly interested and also subtly interested: we want our inward concerns to be vast, also delicate. Where vastness exists with delicacy helping it, our interest is successful; as we want it.
Interest at its highest is love. I shall say much more of love later; but it should be seen now, that wherever love is, there is interest. It is apparent also, as I have intimated, that wherever hate is, there is interest. It takes a good deal of trouble for the personality either to love or hate; and what the personality is willing to take trouble about, it is interested in.
So the job of life is an extension, an organization, of interest. Since a person is already interested in life by living, it is to be expected that he want to find out what it is that interests him. If someone said he was interested in something, and showed a disinclination to find out what that something was, it certainly would not be unfair to presume that there were limitations to his interest. If Edward Leggett said he was deeply interested in Edwina Nasby, and did not want to know much about Edwina, it would justify Edwina in feeling that Edward’s interest was not utter.
Well, the same thing holds good for the person who says he’s interested in life. Now life implies where life happens, what life comes from, what life is a form of; and so if a person says he’s interested in life, and doesn’t want to know about what life is of—well, despite his probable disclaimers, it could be said of this person that his interest in life was unfinished or incomplete. It could be said truly.
For if we’re interested in something and are not interested in what that thing is of, or comes from, our desire for knowledge has been limited, and this shows likewise a limitation of interest. It follows that if a person—no matter how “wrapped up in himself,” self-centered, egoistic, selfish, acquisitive—is not interested in what he is of, in knowing what he is wholly, in knowing what he’s from, this person is not truly interested in himself. This is why such a person can appear dull to others. A person truly interested in himself is not egoistic: he can be entertainingly vigilant.
A self has to do with everything, and so if it is interested in what it is, it is interested in everything it has to do with. Further, the more it is interested in what it has to do with, the more it is given to its own concerns. Interest is a matter of scope and intensity; of diversity and order; or, as I have already said, of largeness and subtlety. If we are not eager to know what we are, our selves in their largeness and their delicacy; if we are not ardent in making order or shape out of our knowledge, we are alive, but we are not completely interested in living. The interest we think we have does not satisfy our whole selves, and in one way or another, we show it. To live and not be truly interested in life is a cause of unshapely grief; and grief that is unshapely will show its unshapeliness.
Interest, like other things, approaches completeness. It is clear that if a person is completely interested, and is at peace in his being completely interested, large desire has been fulfilled. Complete interest means that a person is wholly in the thing which interests him, wholly of it. While being wholly of something or in something, he still has to be he, for there is still someone who is interested. And certainly when a person is interested, he feels vivid, active, successful, free. For interest is a way of mind a person wants, believes in, sees as good for himself. So in complete interest, a person is wholly free while he wholly is in something. He is wholly, and he is of wholly.
To be someone completely, or oneself wholly, and to be of something or someone wholly, is the aesthetic state. This is so because a person is then intimately, warmly, accurately, intensely himself, while he has given himself to otherness wholly. It is then he is joyously the same and different. At this point, love and art, sex and beauty, affection and knowledge, desire and lucidity, passion and exactness, become each other, are each other. —Interest approaches logical and fleshly ecstasy. Interest, wholly successful, is art, and love. The greatest desire of our unconscious is to be interested more and more.
God and reality and everything want us to be interested in them. To be interested is to be excited, knowing, and peaceful. It is a feeling mighty hard to realize. Art has realized some of it. All of us want to realize it, and so much we honor art or aesthetics.