Part 03 - Curiosity: A Choice

“The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.” -Dorothy Parker

Curiosity: A Choice

Today is another day. Right? That’s obvious. But think about the implications behind this. What is a day? Take a moment and consider what it takes for “another day” to exist. Seriously, think about it. I’ll give you some space.

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We live on a giant rock with water, floating around an even larger ball of “fire”, which is floating around in infinite space. You are a sack of functioning organs, held together by bones, muscle, and skin.

Constantly flowing through you is a liquid that is essential for life: blood. This all came from one sperm and one egg. You have a brain. Your brain is conscious. Your brain is reading symbols arranged in a specific way, and these symbols have meaning. You read these organized symbols and nod your head, and a voice inside your head (which, by the way, is that your own voice?) reads. Which means you have an organ that can see.

So you see this giant ball of fire come over the horizon every day, go across the sky (sometimes covered by floating water vapor), and disappear. Another day, right?

Well, when you really think about it, there is nothing normal about any of this. Life is entirely bizarre. Everything is right in front of you, but you have to choose to look at it and think about it. You have to choose to be curious.

It is that simple. Now that you have read this, you have a choice:

Go about your life, looking at the bird and telling yourself: cardinal. And that is it. Move on to the next thing. Tree. And the next one. And some day that will end. And you will have lived your life.

Go about your life, looking at the bird, and ask yourself: How? Why? Question everything.

My life completely changed during my freshman year of college after I read Benjamin Franklin’s autobiography. His life was centered on curiosity. He asked questions, did experiments, took notes, tried to acquire new skills. I found this inspiring.

I can honestly say from that point on that I chose to be more interested in things. I chose to be curious. I chose to ask questions and seek understanding. If something were to come across my path, I would ask more than “what.” I would ask “why” and “how.” And the major distinction from before is that I desired to know what, why, or how. This applies to everything, not just my key interests (human behavior and nature).

I try to be curious about everything (keyword: try). That includes math. Or art. Or grammar. I began to get a rush from the process of understanding. And once I chose to be curious and felt the rush of discovery, I wanted to apply it more and more. This is the result of curiosity.

Being more curious increases the amount of things you know. But more importantly, being curious helps you understand how things work. You begin to crack the code on the language of the universe. Those laws pass over from subject to subject. They can be applied. You can make connections.

The more connections you make, the more you understand how things work. Not only that, but the more you observe and ask questions, the better you get at asking the right questions.

Your thought process becomes more efficient. After taking an entire day to contemplate why the cardinal is red, you take one minute to understand why the finch is gold. Or why the slow turtle has a shell. Or why wealthy people remain in power.

That is the power of curiosity. It opens the door on our self-made ceilings, and it opens our awareness to both the measurable universe and ourselves.