“I have to admit that, although I do not feel that I myself have changed, my love for the mountains is draining away from me like a wave running backwards down the sand. My thoughts are unchanged, but the mountains have taken leave of me. Their unchanging joys mean less and less to me, so long and so intently have I sought them out….When I climb, it is not among bracken and rock-face, but among the phantoms of my memories….What attracts me now is the forest.” —Tristes Tropiques, Claude Levi-Strauss

This is a poignant reminder that sometimes we lose our passion for something that once gave us great joy.

Perhaps we lose the physical stamina to play tennis, or we weary of needlepoint, or we move to place where gardening isn’t possible.

Or, as has happened to me, we spend enough time on a fascinating subject that we come to the end of it, for ourselves. I experienced this with Churchill. What a joy it was to write Forty Ways to Look at Winston Churchill, my biography of Churchill! What a subject! And yet now, when I see a new Churchill biography in the bookstore, I have no desire to read it. I love to re-read the works that Churchill wrote himself, but I’ve come to the end of his life as a subject for study.

Have you ever left behind one activity or subject you loved? And like Levi-Strauss, were you able to find something else to turn to?

Gretchen Rubin is the author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller The Happiness Project—an account of the year she spent test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier—and the recently released Happier at Home and Better Than Before. On her popular blog, The Happiness Project, she reports on her daily adventures in the pursuit of happiness. For more doses of happiness and other happenings, follow Gretchen on Facebook and Twitter.

Image courtesy of Rachel Davis.