Brave New Kitty

Curiosity is a wonderful personality trait. Curious people have open minds. They delight in learning new things. They are interesting, because they are interested. When they ask questions, you feel their sincerity. Curious people are fun to be around.

Of course, I’m not talking about nosy curiosity, curiosity about other people’s lives and business. I’m talking about the curiosity that pulls us out of our comfort zone straight into new knowledge, new experiences, and new awarenesses. It’s important to be curious, because curiosity is a basic skill necessary for learning, personal development, and an all-around adventurous life. Being curious means you appreciate the wonder and miracle of consciousness. That is, of being alive.

Curiosity also allows for a less judgmental outlook, particularly about your own behavior. When you do something that falls short of your standards, yell at someone you love, for example, a curious attitude can bring you past harsh self-criticism. Instead of stopping at, “God, I’m so stupid!” and beating yourself up, being curious about the behavior can actually bring you to new insights. If instead you say to yourself, “Now why would I do that??” with genuine curiosity and a sincere desire to understand your behavior, you have a much better chance of moving past it for good. You may discover that your bad day at work is still bothering you and you’re projecting that on your loved one, or you tend to be short-tempered when you don’t get enough sleep, or what the person did is a trigger because it’s something your mother used to do right before she got drunk. Whenever behavior doesn’t fit a situation, there is always an underlying reason. This is the case with other people’s behavior as well. Curiosity cultivates kindness and tolerance.

Curiosity has a bad time of it, though. It seems to almost be seen as a weakness, an attribute of the non-cool, or something you leave behind in childhood. Many people would rather remain ignorant than risk looking stupid or uncool by asking a question. This is one of the biggest mistakes a person can make. If you want to grow and develop, you must shed self-consciousness, not curiosity.

Something of interest is to be found everywhere you look, without exception. If you can’t find something worth your curiosity, then you are not looking hard enough, or you have not learned how to look. Because absolutely everything in interesting. I’ll give you an example. In my work as a technical writer, I wrote about pressure transmitters, medical data base software, refrigeration units, and counter tops, among other things. Each one of these things had a fascinating story. Do you know what a pressure transmitter does? It’s a sturdy but delicate industrial control, used by hundreds of different businesses, from dairies to oil refining to the paper industry, to monitor production processes. In the process of learning enough about pressure transmitters to write about them,  I also learned a lot of other interesting things. I learned about the different industries that use them. I learned about my client’s business competitors. I met people from Canada, Mexico, the UK, Holland, Italy, the Czech Republic, China, Japan, and I learned some things about how foreigners viewed Americans and America. I learned about industries in foreign countries. I learned about the translation process. I made friends. Pressure transmitters opened up a new world for me.

The point is, if I can find interest in pressure transmitters, I can find interest in anything, and so can everybody else. For me, curiosity is pretty much global; it’s rare for me to walk down the street and not be curious about something or someone I see. I take great pleasure in it. But global curiosity isn’t necessary; events, people, and desires in your own life should provide fodder enough to feed your curiosity for years; actually, for the rest of your life.

I think a lack of curiosity indicates a pathology of sorts, for the state of being curious is inherently human. Man’s survival tool is his brain. Consciousness and self-awareness make us what we are, and curiosity, about who we are, about why we’re here, about how to improve our lives, is a basic component of both. If a person isn’t curious, something somewhere has gone awry. Maybe his curiosity got squelched out by shaming parents. Maybe he learned to associate curiosity with stupidity when he got laughed at in grade school. Maybe he’s depressed, or maybe he’s high. Whatever the root cause, lack of curiosity is an unhealthy state of mind. It’s also very sad. You’re done before you’ve even begun. The road of personal development is under construction. The bridge is out, and you’re stuck on the wrong side of the river.

But take heart; curiosity is never gone forever; in fact, it’s not gone at all. If we have the capacity to think, we have curiosity. Its full potential exists within us all. Pay attention to your inner world and, in Shakespeare’s words, to thine own self be true. From a small start, a new universe can open up.