The person studying a small thing is not necessarily thinking small thoughts.

Scale of subject and scale of thought are unrelated. Somebody spending a decade on one species of beetle, one poet’s punctuation, one paragraph of a statute may be working on questions about evidence, meaning or justice that reach a long way past the object. From outside it looks like a narrow life. From inside it is a lens, and the narrowness is what makes the depth possible.

Before dismissing an obsession as trivial, ask what the person is actually chasing through it. Then consider giving one of your own small interests permission to become serious.