Question For much of my life, I have defined myself through my intellectual pursuits. I loved learning, reading, and poetry. Thinking held a genuine excitement for me, and I craved academic and literary challenges. Within the past few months, for no reason that I can discern, all of that changed. I am not an unhappy person aside from the fact that I have lost this part of my identity (so I don’t think that I am clinically depressed), but I have become lazy. I still read a little, but I no longer enjoy it. When I try to do the things I loved, they now seem boring or, at least, like work. And I like the person I was then much better than the person I am now. She was more thoughtful, had higher standards for herself, and was searching for her purpose in life. And it also feels kind of like, if I am not an intellectual, then what good am I? My sense of morality, my worldview, and my desire to achieve all came from my intellectual concept of the world. How do I bring back this “spark”? Is there a way to fall back in love with learning?

Accepted:

June 27, 2010