Isn't that interesting?

I'm not sure I very often find things interesting. It's a word I use a lot to make those around me happy. "That's really interesting," I say, or words to that effect, generally with a "really" or a "very" or some other magnifier. Just "interesting" doesn't seem enough. But how often do I really experience even "mildly interesting" or "barely interesting"? Today, for instance, I heard on the radio that 40 percent of credit card companies' profits come from late fees and other penalties. I thought to myself, "That's interesting!" and endeavored to remember it. But was it really interesting? An interesting thing is not just surprising. It is intriguing. It gets you interested - piques your interest. In other words, it is potentially the beginning of something, of a lasting interest. And I'm not now interested in how credit card companies make their profits. I'm not going to study the subject or write about it (beyond this) or ask questions.

This is what makes me unfit for the academic world. Perhaps I'm wrong, but it seems to me that academics who at all enjoy their work say to themselves "That's interesting!" at least twice a day and actually mean it. Not just about their work, but about the world around them, about people and places and things. Sometimes I am jealous of the almost unbelievable sloth and self-indulgence we allow our academics, but when I actually picture myself doing the work I know that within a couple weeks it would become an awful chore of going over and over and into and through things that never ever quite rise, for me, to being interesting.

Does this mean I'm not a curious person? It could, but it seems to me I am curious, but my curiosity is constantly disappointed by reality. I don't want to know more because in a thoroughly jaded way I feel like I know (very approximately) what that more will consist of in just about every subject and situation. I long to be interested. I look for interesting things every day. I've been on a tear of reading novels I "should have" read and catching up on some history, in part no doubt out of some mix of nostalgia, shame, dissatisfaction and jealousy, but also with the not-yet-thoroughly-extinguished hope that something in or about one of them will be interesting.

But in the end I don't get that out of my reading. Yet I do get something more than the catharsis of all those bad emotions. If the experience is positive I get a sort of generalized aesthetic delight. If it's unusually positive I may even get singed a couple of times by that hard gem-like flame. In other words, I get pleasure. And that perhaps is the conclusion of this long, probably unread passage. The older I get the more I am convinced that I am a hedonist or a worshipper of Dionysus or an epicure. I wouldn't care to manifestize about it, or declare it the last word in my life or anyone else's. But I have found pleasure reliable, at both my worst moments and my best.

There once was a seeker of pleasure
Who diddled herself at her leisure
In her mind she'd conduct
A string trio she fuct
With a downstroke beginning each measure