A Curious Mind
How curiosity can save your life
When we’re children, we view the world with the glasses of awe, wonder, and curiosity. When we’re young and starting to explore the world, everything is new to us and everything unique. We would just do things because they were fun and interesting, and eventually one fun thing led to another and we went and explored that new thing which probably led to another.
But somewhere along the way, the world tells us our curiosity is a little too outside the box, that we need to study a certain curriculum in school, that we need to hold certain jobs, that the world works in a very set way and there is no changing it.
And so our curiosity starts to shrink. We learn more about the world that we need to inhabit because time is limited and we lose the ability to explore like we once did.
But yet, if we can find a way to harness that child-like curiosity, if we can remove ourselves from the mold the world tries to form us in, if we can reframe how we interpret and experience the world, then we can change our lives, and in the process, find tremendous freedom.
Curiosity is a super power. It keeps us moving, it keeps us entertained, it helps drive ourselves and our race forward. Without curiosity, without cultivating a curious mind, we find ourselves lacking something within.
Curiosity is what led Newton to discover gravity, and it is what allowed Einstein to sit in a patent office and daydream of how the physics of the universe work. Unfortunately, there is so much noise nowadays, it is hard to find a signal, and therefore, we like and take surface level information as we’re moving fast and need to digest the world quickly.
But curiosity is actually the opposite. Curiosity is ultimately the pleasure of being lost in the exploration of thought. Sometimes we set out to explore, purposely being curious where as other times it is a byproduct of other ends we are in pursuit of. And that’s the beauty of curiosity, even if you do not pursue it directly, if you are interested in the world, if you become intrigued with a facet of life, you will begin to explore it more. It is the path to learning in a fun and interesting way. Curiosity is the art of peeling back layers and exploring, it is looking under the hood of something and being intrigued by what one finds.
And we need this mindset, this ability to be curious about the world, to thrive within it.
As Zena Hitz put it in her book, Lost In Thought:
“If human beings flourish from their inner core rather than in the realm of impact and results, then the inner work of learning is fundamental to human happiness, as far from pointless wheel spinning as are the forms of tenderness we owe our children or grandchildren. Intellectual work is a form of loving service at least as important as cooking, cleaning, or raising children; as essential as the provision of shelter, safety, or health care; as valuable as the delivery of necessary goods and services; as crucial as the administration of justice.”
By looking at life with an eye toward curiosity, we provide ourselves the ability to mentally focus on things that drive our interests. The more something interests us, the more engaged we are with it, and the more engaged we are, the more time we devote to it. This can be not only life affirming by pushing us on paths we may never have previously thought to explore, it can save our lives.
When we embrace curiosity, we open ourselves up to a world of endless possibility and learning. This in turn forces us to investigate things, sometimes ourselves and sometimes the outside world. Our lives suddenly take on a new hue, we now see the world with different spectacles, we see a world of great depth and importance. We also come to see, as Emerson once put it, that everything in the world is hitched to something else. With endless curiosity, we follow those paths, finding intrigue in the new worlds we’ve uncovered.
Curiosity ultimately knows no bounds.
As the great poet Dorothy Parker once put it:
“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.”
By living a life of curiosity, one is living the most rewarding of lives.
Thank you again for reading and I hope you found this useful. Please feel free to heart, comment, or ask questions about this post. Suggestions are always appreciated and considered.
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo