Dreams of a Polymath

How does one define Potential?

I have been thinking about this pretty obsessively over the last few days.  I think that often the word comes with boundaries. For example...  That person has the potential to be a great researcher... or ... That person has the potential to a good athlete.  These statements indicate that the person in question is neither a great researcher or a good athlete.  It also could imply that the person could only reach a certain level in their respective area. I look at people like James Franco or da Vinci and marvel.  For those of you who don't know, James Franco is an actor, film-maker, author, and is getting his Ph.D. at Yale in English.  People with this kind of drive seem to astound the public.  What is the point in doing all of these things when you are already successful and have so much money? I live in a University town, and still don't know anyone who is like really like this.  An active Renaissance man.  A Polymath.  Homo Universalis. Someone who actively learns about a wide variety of topics and strives to master each one.

Why do people not strive to achieve this?

I think this is a problem with our society.  Our society encourages us to go to college and get a degree in a specific field, so that we can work in that field, and so that we can die in that field.  That is a sad proposition.  Only so much can be learned in one area.  This problem is funny to me though because the American University education system is set up to give its students a wide variety of knowledge, and it is not until you get to higher Graduate-level education that one really begins to truly specialize in a specific area.  Then how is it that the students are not well rounded?  My observation which saddens me to the core is that people choose not to be.  I hear "I am an studying to be an engineer, why would I care what is in a Cell, or why would I care how to write a short story?"  I think these responses depress me so much because I do not understand them in the slightest.  I can't fathom an answer that does not sound odd or foreign to me.  I am not socially inept enough to not know what the answer is, but it truly makes no sense to me.  When I see something that I do not know much about, I yearn to know as much about it as I can as fast as I can.  For  as long as I can remember I have had to fight down urges to quit what I am doing because I want to spend all of my time learning about how this or that works.  Just yesterday I though, "C. you should learn how to make music, and see how long it would take you to either have a hit song or at least make something really original and beautiful."  I have always had to keep these urges on a tight reign since that is not a good way to keep a job.  I dream of what an unencumbered life away from frivolities would be like.  This is no reason stop learning or to only focus on one thing, but a dream that one day things will free up a bit so that I can fill it up once more with other passions.


One Day,

C. Fletcher