Fickle

I have to admit it. Sometimes I’m fickle.

What a rotten word. It’s almost like a curse word, isn't it? Fickle. Sounds like something stuck to the bottom of your shoe that you can’t get off. Sounds like a sharp object sticking out of the carpet, waiting for the bottom of your foot.

But there’s no getting around it. There are a few things I stick with for the long haul, my wife and kids not being the least of them. Music is not a problem. Or reading. Or studying the Bible. But with a lot of other things I’m into it for a while, I’m full of curiosity and wonder, and then it starts to trail off into an occasional ho hum whatever.

Exhibit A: For a while I was into photography. I got an okay camera. I read books on it. I read articles. I started paying attention to photos, really thinking about what I liked or didn’t like about them. How they were composed. Here are a few images I shot:

I really enjoyed it, trying to get different kinds of shots. Especially with my cheap camera. It was a challenge. But now I have a hard time remembering to take my camera with me to anything. And I don’t really know why. Whatever the reasons, I lost interest.

And this isn’t the first time this has happened. I have picked up and sat back down: Baseball. Piano. Fishing. Roasting my own coffee beans. Drawing with colored pencils. Writing poetry. Basketball. Exploring my family history.

The list goes on and on.

It honestly, if irrationally, makes me feel at times like the bourgeois pig that inspired the misguided Karl Marx to write the Communist Manifesto. When I think about it over time, the ins and outs of one fascination giving way to another, it makes me feel like a petulant child who can’t make up his mind what toy to play with, the kid who is bored all the time and needs to be entertained.

Then again, maybe it’s just the way life goes when you have an inquisitive mind.

?

Psalm 63:3-5
Peace to you.


© LW Publishing 2011