After doing thorough self-analysis and reflection, I've found that I am primarily motivated by 2 things: competition and adventure. The former is easily demonstrated through dodgeball, where I get visibly upset if I think someone is better than me and inspires me to pound my chest like a gorilla and try to go get that person out. Fantasy sports, chess, tennis, all are fueled by a competitive drive. However, the motivator that's a close second is adventure: I'm actually a fan of the unknown. Sometimes I'll just go to new cities and ride one of the subway lines to a spot for no particular reason, just because I've never been to that particular spot. As a kid, I played 2 types of video games: sports games (baseball, hockey) and adventure games (Mario, Pokemon, Star Fox) where the story would play out in an epic quest. Learning new languages can be an adventure: I start at virtually zero of a language and then a whole world opens up to me of culture, ways of expressing oneself, different TV shows in the foreign language that I use to learn. Recently, I've applied the adventurous spirit to art museums. Art and aesthetics doesn't inherently motivate me as much as it does some other people like my wife, I see a nice painting and admire how much work was put into it, the level of detail, but my short attention span prods me into moving on quickly onto the next one. For places like the National Gallery of Art and the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C., though, where MJ and I went this past weekend, I've developed a new technique: each room of an art gallery is an adventure room of different worlds where I can move to different themed rooms and feel that I've gone to a new dimension, a new reality of different art. I especially like old European paintings/ murals of the countryside or splendid scenery where I can transport myself into that perspective and imagine going to that place. It's really helped my viewing of art, I think. It's helped that recently due to MJ's leg injury I've had to wheel her around, so it's like I'm pushing (more like guiding her) into each room of new worlds, like leaping together into a portal that transports us to Paris in the 1800's, or Spain, rural U.S., each painting tells its own story. Adventurous Bobby is satisfied, and it doesn't hurt that usually art museums are designed in a pleasant manner to appeal to the patron's senses, like I wonder what crossing through the next doorway will bring, or what the sound of the fountain is coming from. And I realize that I don't need to go too far to discover adventure; I can get a little bit of Paris without actually having to go to Paris.
I think people in today's society get a little bogged down and lose their sense of adventure. Sure you can take an adventure on your smart phone and go through all the new videos Youtube is recommending, but people don't step out of their comfort zone as much as when they were a kid. I find things like, for example, running to the Hollywood sign for the first time such an exhilarating experience, or going through all the different levels of Powell's Bookstore in Portland, or exploring the various paths and buildings on the campus of Duke University. Whenever I hear of people committing suicide or losing the will to live I wish that they would watch something funny that makes them laugh 30 times, like a kid laughing uncontrollably, or engage in an adventure (small adventures, doesn't have to be some epic 30-country world tour), like we used to do as kids: laugh a lot and go on adventures. People often talk about what the meaning of life is, like love and reproduction, which are noble meanings, but shouldn't the quest for joy (i.e. laughing) and the quest for adventure be a strong candidate for the meaning of life? They are for me.
What other things motivate me? Well, recently love has played a part in my decision making, whereas previously I hadn't really known what it was. Compassion, thirst for knowledge, morality all rank up there, but I have to admit that the biggest thing out of the rest is probably money. Yes, money does motivate me. The Chinese have a saying for it is like one's heart races faster when money is put on the table. But money is not the meaning of life, it's just a means to life.
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