Excitement

Off the top of my head I’m not sure what I think excitement is. There is an element of anticipation to it that kind of scares me. When I think of anticipating something, especially something good, I am afraid that whatever I’m looking forward to happening won’t happen or won’t happen the way I hoped it would. So it’s hard to get excited about something that is going to happen in the future.

However, maybe I can learn to be excited about things happening right now. One definition of excitement is enthusiasm. If I can do something with enthusiasm maybe the feeling of excitement will exist also. I can see how if I’m enthusiastic about something, I might be excited about it, too. Is enthusiasm an emotion? I’m not sure. I always thought that enthusiasm is something I decide to pursue something with. So can pursuing something with enthusiasm lead to excitement. I think so.

Another aspect of excitement is adventure. When I think of the times in my life when I’ve planned for an adventure, whether it was backpacking in the Rockies or exploring different towns with my family, there was definitely excitement. But there was disappointment when the planned adventure(s) didn’t happen. I remember one year when we planned a camping trip to the Boston, Massachusetts area. Before we were able to leave on the trip, which included several days in upstate New York and a trip to the Cooperstown Baseball Hall of Fame, our van’s transmission failed. We could not afford the trip and the transmission and since we couldn’t pull the trailer at all without the transmission, the trip was scrapped. I don’t know if I’ve ever let myself get excited over possible trips since then. I’m not sure I’ve let myself feel excitement over any adventures since then.

Excitement also has the element of passion with it. I sometimes have the passion to do things, a drive, a motivation that maybe resembles excitement. One of those things is Bible Study. I usually enjoy Bible Study and can get excited over reading the Scriptures and the commentaries and figuring out how God wants me to apply His Word to my life. Another passion I have is to write. I get excited when I have an idea and that idea can be put down in words in such a way as to convey understanding to someone else. I often get excited about writing my blog articles for instance. Today is one of those days.

The opposite of excitement, for me, is apathy, boredom, and dullness. I could not identify those emotions without the help of a dictionary. I can see now, after having looked it up, how excitement is the opposite of those three things. I can also see that by not planning adventures in my life, I’m opening myself up for the boredom and dullness that I dread. I don’t want to be apathetic about the things happening in my life. I want to be excited. So I guess I better plan an adventure. Maybe it doesn’t have to be as big as a trip to Boston. I can start small and plan an adventure to someplace nearby or for an activity I might enjoy doing.

I could maybe plan to get out my scrapbooking materials and continue a project I started a while ago but lost interest in. That could be an adventure in a way and I don’t have to go anywhere to encounter it. Can I experience excitement in a situation like that? I think so. Even a little excitement would be nice to feel.