Being Curious

Curiosity killed the cat.  The lesson of this old adage is that curiosity is something to be controlled at worst and avoided at best.  Being curious is being nosey which, it has been drummed in to us from a very early age, is not acceptable.

Yet, without curiosity in our lives, everything slows down burdened by its own administrivia.  Living becomes a series of problems to be managed and solved. In looking down and micromanaging the daily events of life, we no longer think globally.  We become unwilling to look up and out and to explore a different reality and a different possibility.

We long for inspiration but all too often look outside ourselves for it.  When we honour our curiosity, we become our own inspiration.  When we allow ourselves to see through different lenses, we can we can think differently, we can recontextualize reality, we can define our world for ourselves, we can revel in the marvel and joyousness and potential of exploring what is known and what is not yet known.

Being curious and nosey and thought provoking will not kill us.  It will pave the way for new ways to engage with the world. As we allow our thoughts to wander, as we ask “What if?”, as we wonder and want to know more and differently, we redefine our world.  In doing that, we engage with others in ways that will provoke their own curiosity of themselves and of their world.  In our willingness to be curious, we become the inspiration and invitation to others to give their own curiosity free reign.  Being curious is thought provoking.  It is contagious.

Knowledge is growing at an exponential rate.  We can no longer be satisfied with living our lives cautiously and carefully believing that incremental change is not only safe but sufficient to address the issues and concerns in this world.  The potential for the change to create the world which we want is limited only by our willingness to ask questions and by the size of the questions which we ask.

What would our world look like if Columbus had not been curious about what lay over the horizon, or if Galileo had not looked at the heavens and wondered what was there in the night sky, or if man had not looked at the moon and imagined walking on it?