Last week, my sister gifted me with a full set of like-new World Book encyclopedias. She is a teacher, and having moved out of state to Boston, did not want to take them with her. I explained to my older son what, exactly, the books are, and he was fascinated.
A set of matching books, with beautiful covers and color pictures, organized by the letters of the alphabet, and containing information about—everything! I told him to choose what to look up first, and he delightedly told me he wanted to look for leopards. He was excited about the possibilities, and when I asked what we should read about next, he declared “every animal in the world! And horses. Are horses in the world?” I said that, yes, they are, and from there we read about monkeys, then, spider monkeys, and even Spider Man.
It was a lesson in finding joy in the present moment, and being exhilarated by the discovery of new information. And what a joy is it! My son is four years old (he will turn five this October), and every day is a mixture of listening to all of the cute, funny things he says, and things like persuading him to share his toys with his baby brother. He loves learning, and his growing mind is primed to do it.
This joy of discovery corresponds to what behavioral scientists have learned about human motivation. We like learning new things—how to play piano, speak Spanish, cook pasta from scratch, complete a puzzle—just for the sake of learning them. People are lifelong learners, every one of us: it makes us happy to get better, just because. In Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us, author Daniel H. Pink describes an experiment in which one group of people were paid to complete a puzzle, and a second group were not. In the second group, the subjects actually worked longer at the puzzle, with better results, because their motivation was intrinsic, as opposed to external, or reward-motivated. It feels good to learn about things. Like puzzles. Or leopards. Or even all the animals in the world.
The joy is out there. The information is out there—we just have to learn it. Maybe even in the encyclopedia.
