I was talking to my grandfather about my classes (because I spend a lot of time with my grandparents, and they take a great interest in everything I do - they've been listening to me ramble about my upcoming NaNoWriMo novel, which I may or may not blog about in the future).
"Do you like your classes?" he asked me.
I had to consider the question. The subjects were English, history, and math - fairly pedantic, at least by my standards. (I took astronomy and psychology in my first and second semesters of college, respectively, and this semester is my third.) I didn't dislike the classes, if that was what he meant. I was going to say something to that effect before it occurred to me that there's more than one way to live something, and there's more than one thing to like about a situation like a class. You might not like the subject matter, but you might like the teacher, or the way things are taught, or the specific parts of the otherwise-dull subject that are taught, or that you're going over things you already knew but in a different way, or that a once-confusing subject is finally, finally making sense.
"You know, I do like them," I said. "I like my English class because I understand the stuff we're talking about and there's a lot I can add to the discussions, I like my history class because we're basically going over stuff I studied for fun as a kid but we're revisiting it and learning it in different ways, and I like my math class because math is finally making sense and I'm not dreading it." (I am horribly mathematically-challenged.)
"Good." He smiled. "That's good."
It was good. It was good that I was enjoying my classes, and it was good that I identified the way that I liked them, and it was good that I'd realized that there are many ways to like a thing. I think that, if people understood that, they would broaden their spheres of what they "liked", and we'd just be slightly happier in general.
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