IT’S ALL ABOUT INTENSE MOTIVATION. Amba reads an article in Scientific American about what it takes to become an expert — in chess, in brain surgery, in hunting. She writes:

And motivation operates in a feedback loop: the pleasure of difficult success feeds the drive for more such challenges and rewards. It’s easy to see that the reinforcing rewards are both internal — the aesthetic rush of solving a problem — and external: praise, status, opportunity.

Ah, but how to get started on that loop? Our ancestors had the easy start-up motivation of hunger, but we — or our children — could wander aimlessly through life, never feeling the initial motivation. Perhaps nothing is more valuable and mysterious than becoming interested in something in the first place.