A passage that illustrates the nature of obsession
“Whatever the direction of his thoughts, he kept coming back to the same unanswerable but inescapable questions. It was as if the working of his head had stripped the main screw that held his life together. The screw wouldn’t go in or come out; it just turned without biting on anything, always in the same hole, and he couldn’t stop it turning.”
It’s from War and Peace.
And it got me thinking:
Perhaps the difference between obsession and mastery is that, with mastery, the screw bites. Every turn forces it deeper.
Obsession stays in the same place.
Mastery makes progress in the object of it’s obsession.
Swell & Cut 