[Greetings, friends, from Austin! Over the weekend, I had the wonderful opportunity to participate in the Houston Hyrox mixed doubles division with my girlfriend. (For those who are unfamiliar, Hyrox is a race that combines running and functional workout stations—ski erg, sled push/pull, row, etc.—where participants run 1km, followed by a functional workout station, repeated eight times.)
This is my sixth Hyrox competition in the last three years, and the energy is contagious and electric every time. Being around the people and participating in the weekend is an absolute blast, even if only as a spectator.
Part of it, I believe, is being around people who are enthusiastic and excited about something. There is a certain type of aura put off by people chasing something that pulls them and trying to improve at something they are passionate about. It feels like stardust.
Compare this with the typical workday of many modern folk’s lives, where we’re either surrounded, not by enthusiasm, but by a low-grade lack of interest—a draining day-to-day that strips our energy and leaves us lifeless. This is partly why an ability to be excited is one of the best ways to stand out in a career or pursuit—it introduces a glow into a dim world, and people are attracted to it like moths to a flame. With the enthusiast, there’s a quickness of step and a lightness of being, a brightness in the eyes, and an electricity cracking around them.
I realize it’s nearly impossible to tell someone they should be more enthusiastic. We cannot snap our fingers and make ourselves genuinely excited about something we aren’t excited about. To which I answer: it falls then to us to find something we can be enthusiastic about.
In my estimation, there is at least one proven way to fill our sails with enthusiasm. It starts by finding something you care about to grow in. Existing in a state where we are learning new things tends to keep our enthusiasm levels relatively high. Many adults experience a mid-life crisis because they stop learning about things that interest them, and the distraction of the learning curve at their job has plateaued.
This unlocks the second key to enthusiasm: accomplishment. Not necessarily in the sense of achieving any particular goal but in observing your growth. We’re enthusiastic when working on something we want to complete or master, and seeing milestones or signposts that tell us we’re heading in the right direction fills us.
Whether it’s a creative project, a business, or a fitness endeavor, there are few substitutes in life for something that makes it fun to get up and get after it. There is a beauty in life that starts to brighten everything when you find something to be excited about.
In the words of Earl Nightingale, “the happiest, most interesting people are those who have found the secret of maintaining their enthusiasm, that God within.”1
So it is to enthusiasm, its utility and vitality, that we devote the rest of today’s essay.]
“Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Circles)
Enthusiasm is the fuel for all greatness. It is the fire that burns within all great explorers and great inventors; great poets and great artists. The enthusiast’s spirit drives them further than their fellows and pushes the world forward.
Yet, it is also dangerous. Like fire, which warms and cooks but also burns and reduces to ash, enthusiasm creates but, when unhinged, becomes chaotic. As with many things in this category, like masculinity for instance (see On Iron John), society tends to live at the extremes—either neglecting it entirely because it is dangerous or being consumed by it because we were never taught how to train it.
As C.S. Lewis says in The World’s Last Night: “Luther surely spoke very good sense when he compared humanity to a drunkard who, after falling off his horse on the right, falls off it next time on the left…” What gets neglected becomes exaggerated. What gets exaggerated becomes neglected. This cycle of action and reaction keeps us out of the messy middle and living in the extremes. (The same holds for politics.)
But this failure to train a healthy version also makes us susceptible to extremes, because we can no longer recognize a deviation from the center. We get so upset that nobody is enthusiastic anymore that we cling to the first show of excitement and lose our ability to identify when it’s gone too far. Or we focus so much on the dangers of an exaggeration that we suddenly believe it ought to be avoided entirely. All conquerors may be enthusiasts, but so are all who resist them.
The Curious Case of Enthusiasm Lost
With this tendency in mind, we can now speak to contemporary society's general loss of enthusiasm. In some strange but real sense, there seems to be a war on things like excellence and enthusiasm in today’s culture. We have created a Machine2 that levels (see On the Present Age)—a “silent, mathematical, and abstract occupation which shuns upheavals.”3 We need look no further than the recent criticism of actor Timothée Chalamet for saying this during an award acceptance speech: “But the truth is, I’m really in pursuit of greatness. I know people don’t usually talk like that, but I want to be one of the greats. I’m inspired by the greats.”
The Machine doesn’t like enthusiasm. Why? Because “it undermines the structures we have devised and built to sustain the arbitrary and artificial nature of our world view.”4 It threatens to introduce individuality into a society that prefers the efficiency of conformity. And for the most part, the Machine gets its wish—people deciding it’s much easier to fit in than be the tall poppy that stands out and gets cut.
Consider, for example, the typical adolescent-to-adult pipeline in today’s world: we are sent to school, where we are slowly trained to set aside the things we loved as kids to become productive parts of an economic Machine. If we are lucky, our education does come with some redeeming qualities, at least teaching us new and interesting things while it pounds us into one of society’s acceptable molds. By the time we have been shaped and sent into the real world, we fall into the belief, consciously or unconsciously, that we know what we need to know for life.
Any learning [we] do from that point on, [we] do passively through the natural passage of time and experience. Or, again, passively through the media, newspapers, radio, and television. If new learning comes to [us], it does so largely through no efforts, or at least minimal efforts, on [our] part.
Learning little that is new or interesting, [our] lives become repetitious and settle down into well-worn grooves. [We] see the same people and go through the same motions every day, and gradually or quickly, all or most of [our] enthusiasm fades from [our] lives.5
All of this conspires to produce people who live passively. People who consume more than they create and adopt a defensive posture in life—stuck in a cycle of reacting to past and current events instead of actively shaping the future.
[A]re we to deduce that people would rather be lumped in among their fellows than insist on their uniqueness? But what is our uniqueness if not our humanness? And what is enthusiasm but the insistence on our humanness?6
In Praise of Enthusiasm
This is where the need for enthusiasm comes in. Derived from the Greek enthousiasmos, it literally means “possessed by a god” or “filled with god”—from en (in) and theos (god). In its Greek context, Plato used enthusiasm to describe the state of being inspired or possessed by a divine power, a sacred madness that seized oracles, poets, and prophets.7 When the Oracle at Delphi delivered her prophecies, she was considered entheos—filled with Apollo. When a poet composed verses of transcendent beauty, they were thought to be channeling the Muses.
There is also a connection to the Ancient Greek thumos, a concept encompassing spiritedness, courage, passion, and vitality.8 Used by Homer more than seven hundred times in the Iliad and the Odyssey, thumos was the core reactor of the Greek heroes. It was also considered one of the fundamental components of the human psyche in Plato’s tripartite model of the soul, alongside reason (logos) and appetite (epithumia). It represented the energetic, forceful aspect of human nature—the capacity for righteous anger, noble ambition, and heroic action.
Both thumos and enthusiasm represent an energetic, vital force that animates human action and gives it purpose and direction. Both are associated with intensity of feeling and commitment. Both stand opposed to disengagement and apathy.
In this sense, enthusiasm might be understood as a kind of thumos—a divine energy that flows through us and empowers us to live with courage, conviction, and purpose. It is the force that enables us to overcome inertia and resistance, to push beyond comfort and convenience, to strive for something greater than mere survival or satisfaction.
This etymological heritage reveals something profound about the nature of enthusiasm: it represents a state of being in which something greater than ourselves moves through us. To be enthusiastic is to be filled with a power transcending ordinary existence. It is to be inspired in a very real sense. It is to have a force of soul that infuses our entire being with floods of life.
Emerson understood this when issuing his call to arms in Nature (see On Beauty). His essay begins with these words:
Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.9
When Emerson effectively launched American literature with this essay, he was trying to spark a tradition of enthusiasm that characterized artistically fruitful periods such as Periclean Athens, Medici Florence, and Elizabethan England. He was trying to get people to recognize that each individual had a divinity that could only be expressed through a human powered by enthusiasm.
A Call to Enthusiasm
The enthusiastic life stands in stark contrast to the detached cynicism and ironic distance that characterizes much of contemporary culture. Where cynicism withdraws, enthusiasm engages. Where irony creates distance, enthusiasm creates connection. Where lukewarmness settles for mediocrity, enthusiasm strives for excellence.
To be enthusiastic is to have access to an inexhaustible wellspring of energy—an internal core reactor generating motivation, creativity, and resilience. This energy replenishes itself through the very act of expression, creating an abundance that overflows into everything the enthusiast does.
In Nature, Emerson describes this abundance as the “floods of life.” The enthusiast is not merely a passive receiver but a circulator—someone who passes on what flows through them, becoming a conduit for inspiration that keeps all worthy things alive for posterity. They are the candle that starts a sea of light. Enthusiasm thus becomes not just an individual experience but a social force.
While the ancient conception of enthusiasm emphasized divine possession, we might today understand it as both a gift and a practice—something we can cultivate through conscious choice and sustained effort. To do so, we must first orient ourselves toward an aim that excites us. Cynicism must give way to wonder, limitation to possibility, and withdrawal to engagement.
We might say we must seek first the kingdom and trust everything else will be added. We must pour into what calls to us and trust it will pour back into us. This is how we make space to be “filled with god,” whether we understand that divine presence in religious terms or as a metaphor for the highest within human nature. This is the reward of an enthusiastic life… it invites the abundance of heaven into the human heart.
An enthusiastic life is not without risks. To care deeply is to become vulnerable. To engage fully is to risk disappointment. To express joy is to risk ridicule. Yet these risks are the necessary price of admission to a life of greater richness and fulfillment.
In a world often characterized by disengagement and despair, choosing enthusiasm—aligning ourselves with the vital, generative forces that animate the universe—becomes not only a path to personal fulfillment but also an act of resistance. As Earl Nightingale reminds us, “The happiest, most interesting people are those who have found the secret of maintaining their enthusiasm, that God within.” They position themselves “on top of life” rather than beneath it, causing events rather than merely reacting to them, moving through life as if it’s happening for them rather than to them.
In the face of modern tedium, cultivating enthusiasm becomes a necessary radical act—a refusal to accept the deadening of spirit that accompanies adulthood in contemporary society. Such individuals stand as living reminders of what is possible when we refuse to settle for lukewarmness and instead embrace life with the fervor and wonder that are our birthright. As Emerson asserted: “Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm. The way of life is wonderful; it is by abandonment.”10
So when you do a thing, do it with all your might. Pour your entire soul into it. Press your unique fingerprint firmly in its heart. Be active, energetic, enthusiastic, and faithful, and you will inherit the kingdom. Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm.
Let us recognize the beauty and power of true enthusiasm; and whatever we may do to enlighten ourselves and others, guard against checking or chilling a single earnest sentiment. For what is the human mind, however enriched with acquisitions or strengthened by exercise, unaccompanied by an ardent and sensitive heart? Its light may illumine, but it cannot inspire. It may shed a cold and moonlight radiance upon the path of life, but it warms no flower into bloom; it sets free no icebound fountains… Enthusiasm, too, is the very life of gifted spirits. Ponder the lives of the glorious in art or literature through all the ages. What are they but records of toils and sacrifices supported by the earnest hearts of their votaries? Dante composed his immortal poem amid exile and suffering, prompted by the noble ambition of vindicating himself to posterity; and the sweetest angel of his paradise is the object of his early love…. What, I ask, can counteract self-distrust, and sustain the higher efforts of our nature but enthusiasm? More of this element would call forth the genius, and gladden the life of New England. While the mere intellectual man speculates, and the mere man of acquisition cites authority, the man of feeling acts, realizes, puts forth his complete energies. His earnest and strong heart will not let his mind rest; he is urged by an inward impulse to embody his thought. He must have sympathy; he must have results. And Nature yields to the magician, acknowledging him as her child. The noble statue comes forth from the marble, the speaking figure stands out from the canvas, the electric chain is struck in the bosoms of his fellows. They receive his ideas, respond to his appeal, and reciprocate his love.11
—
P.S. There are a few verses from the Bible that come to mind as it relates to enthusiasm. They didn’t quite fit in the essay (other than the first one), so I’m including them here:
“Whatever your hand finds to do, do it with all your might; for there is no activity or planning or knowledge or wisdom in Sheol where you are going.” (Ecclesiastes 9:10).
“I know your deeds, that you are neither cold nor hot; I wish that you were cold or hot. ‘So because you are lukewarm, and neither hot nor cold, I will spit you out of My mouth.’” (Revelation 3:15-16)
“Work with enthusiasm,12 as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people.” (Ephesians 6:7)
Earl Nightingale, Two Keys to Enthusiasm (“Keys to Enthusiasm”). I couldn’t find a video to verify the transcript linked, but there is a video here that contains parts of the transcript.
The Machine is an abstract term for mixture of public, press, and technocratic culture we’ve built.
Søren Kierkegaard, The Present Age / On the Death of Rebellion, translated by Alexander Dru with an introduction by Walter Kaufmann, p. 23.
Bernard Levin, In Praise of Exuberance, “New York Times,” April 15, 1984 (“In Praise of Exuberance”).
Keys to Enthusiasm.
In Praise of Exuberance.
See Ion, where Socrates says, “For all good poets, epic as well as lyric, compose their beautiful poems not by art, but because they are inspired and possessed,” and Phaedrus, where Socrates says, “there is also a madness which is a divine gift, and the source of the chiefest blessings granted to men.”
For more on thumos, see Noah Huisman, This Way to the Stars: The Tao Beyond Time.
Henry Theodore Tuckerman, A Defense of Enthusiasm.
The NASB translation uses “goodwill” instead of enthusiasm, and the Greek word being translated here is “eunoia.”
This essay was so poetic and well-researched, I ended up taking long notes from it in my commonplace journal. Thank you for your writing.