Are you ready for today's dose of Daniel Berkeley Updike? This anecdote is from page 69 of the collection of his essays, The Well-Made Book: Essays & Lectures.

A certain emperor once visited the piazza of St. Peter's to see its celebrated fountains: after a few moments, supposing them to be playing in his honour, he observed that the water could now be turned off. The reply was that the order could not be obeyed, for the force that propelled the water was solely gravitational, its supply unlimited. This would perhaps have occurred to a plumber, but it did not occur to the potentate. Both were interested for different reasons, but the emperor had but one source of enjoyment — visual, while the workman had two — visual and intellectual; so the latter had the best of it!

Berkeley precedes this story with the following, describing the fountain's waterworks:

To the cultivated amateur the interest lies in what they do; to the engineer or workman the interest also lies in how they do it.

I'm still mulling over this whole motivation/compulsion thing I mentioned a few days ago. It seems to me that the ability to appreciate something (not necessarily art or architecture) on multiple levels could be a clue to one's motivation/compulsion. I find this to be true with myself. I want to understand more about all levels of topics that interest me; not simply appreciate them from a particular viewpoint. That's why I'm working through the Pastoral Epistles on a slow, methodical basis. You get the gist by just reading them, but you can't really say you understand them until you sit down and work through them on multiple levels. This is true of any sort of study of God's word. I guess I'm saying I appreciate this on multiple levels, and that may in turn feed my compulsion to understand them better.

And it's true in my job as well. I don't just want to cargo-cult code to make things work; I want to understand code so that my skill can grow and I can apply things I understand in different areas.

So, I'll ask again. What compels you? What sorts of things to you appreciate on multiple levels? What sorts of things do you have a desire to understand to a degree beyond that of average folks?