"Let us begin by clearing up the old confusion between the man who loves learning and the man who loves reading, and point out the there is no connexion whatever between the two.
A learned man is a sedentary; concentrated solitary enthusiast, who searches through books to discover some particular grain of truth upon which he has set his heart. If the passion for reading conquers him, his gains dwindle and vanish between his fingers.
A reader, on the other hand, must check the desire for learning at the outset; if knowledge sticks to him well and good, but to go in pursuit of it, to read on a system, to become a specialist or an authority, is very apt to kill what it suits us to consider the more humane passion for pure and disinterested reading."
--Virginia Woolf, "On Fiction"
So which one are you? The avid reader or the steadfast, tremendous learner? How can we continue to chose what we love, without being overruled by it. Or is it surrendering to the process is the only answer? Do we really need to be always in control?
How can one be so obsessed over anything? Freud has acted as the curtain lifters on these neurosis, hysteria, mental state. (...)
