To be wholly devoted to some intellectual exercise is to have succeeded in life.

Success is usually measured in money, status or recognition, but there is another kind: being so absorbed in a subject or a practice that it gives your days their meaning. Someone who has found a lifelong question to pursue, whether in history, mathematics, birdwatching or chess, has something that cannot easily be taken away. You may want other things as well, but that absorption is a real form of having arrived.

Ask what you would study for its own sake if nobody paid or praised you. Give it an hour this week, with no goal beyond enjoying the thinking. See whether it wants more of your time.