[enthusiasm]
intense and eager enjoyment, interest, or approval
[a bit of inspiration]
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
- Theodore Roosevelt
[Q& A with Matthew]
[Jack]: Let’s jump into our first topic. I think with all of these topics it’s important to get clear on a definition of what we are talking about. And I think enthusiasm is one of the most important to define.
How would you define enthusiasm? What is it and what does it look like?
[Matthew]: I’ve spent a lot of time on this one outside of this project over the last couple of years. If I had to tell you what enthusiasm is in one sentence, I really believe that enthusiasm is the secret to eternal youth.
I stumbled onto this while working on Dynamic Catholic’s upcoming Catholic Moment project on aging and dying. I was looking at elderly people and I realized: okay we’ve got this person here, still very engaged in life, and this person here seemingly going through the motions. And they represent enormous groups within the elderly demographic.
What’s the difference? Essentially what I arrived at was enthusiasm.
It might be an oversimplification, but everything good in life adds to our store of enthusiasm and everything bad in life takes from that store of enthusiasm.
And I mean everything. A good parent adds to that store of enthusiasm and a bad parent drains it. Not that it’s binary, but an unintentional or selfish parent takes from that store of enthusiasm. We all know parents who have psychologically or emotionally beaten the enthusiasm out of their children before they were 5 or 10 or 15 or 21..
I really do believe that enthusiasm is the secret to the fountain of youth. Enthusiasm is the secret to staying young in ways that matter and are possible. But it is also the secret to aging gracefully, which is an art unto itself that nobody teaches, or even talks about.
“It’s faith in something and enthusiasm for something that makes a life worth living.”
- Oliver Wendell Holmes
[Jack]: That makes me think about how there are certain seasons of life in which enthusiasm is cel
