Useful Passions

When the movie Revenge of the Nerds came out in 1984, I went to see it with my friends feeling no identification with the film’s group of shy, socially awkward protagonists. This was, remember, before Google and Apple ruled the world, before Comic-Con was the massive event it is now, before cosplay conventions and the rise of anime and the Game of Thrones series. In that year, there was mostly just the growing number of Star Wars devotees, the odd Star Trek fan club, and the game Dungeons & Dragons.

I had been playing the latter since I was twelve, but I did not once consider myself nerdy, and not just because the term at the time was gently pejorative. I attributed this to having been the starting wide receiver on my high school football team and having girlfriends – but, in fact, it had nothing to do with either of these. A couple years before, I had received a call from Dan, whom I had met through the network of D&D enthusiasts in Providence. He wanted to talk shop.

“Which spell do you prefer?” He asked. “Fireball or lightning bolt?”

I did not realize until that moment that I had no interest whatsoever in talking about this game – a game I loved as much as any of my other pursuits – in this fashion. I was somewhat taken off-guard by my own reaction, and had to end the conversation as quickly as possible. What’s wrong, I wondered, about discussing the difference between those spells? I had my opinion on the matter.

My problem, I realize now, was that I was a nascent memoirist, whose job is always to find the universal within any particular experience – for instance, to write a story about D&D for a reader who has never and will never play that game. Why would such a person care about this story? What about that experience could speak to anyone anywhere? In other words, what does it mean to be human no matter what you’re doing?

This is the question that has most interested me my entire life, but I have compassion for those people, the ones sometimes called nerds, who struggle socially when the subject drifts onto something about which they are not passionate. I would rather be passionate about something and only feel comfortable talking about that than not be deeply interested in anything at all.

I believe completely in anyone’s ability to transfer a specific passion to a passion for the whole of life itself, to understand that their love of a TV series or math or even writing is just a portal into loving the experience of being alive. It is much harder if you are conscious of no desire other than some kind of sustained survival, of just not failing, not dying, or not being alone. Survival alone isn’t living, it’s being afraid of life, of losing the thing you’ve never let you’ve never allowed yourself to fully have.

If you like the ideas and perspectives expressed here, feel free to contact me about individual coaching and group workshops.

William KenowerWriting, Nerds, Passions, Dungeons and Dragons2 Comments