The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of this mystery each day. – Albert Einstein

Curiosity is, in great and generous minds, the first passion and the last. – Samuel Johnson

When left to my own devices, I am never bored. Never. (When forced to engage in activities that are under-stimulating or that don’t align with my values, however, it’s a different matter altogether.) If you’ve been reading this blog for awhile, you likely know that I have an array of interests, some of which I talk about here more than others. Collage, poetry, psychology, birding, literature, and photography are chief among those interests. But, I am also very much into fitness, history, cooking, and classic rock music. That’s to say nothing of my deep love of all things Agatha Christie, as well as British crime TV shows, past and present.

Over the years, I have come to realize that curiosity is my lifeblood. It’s curiosity that makes me love life, that makes me never want to stop learning, growing, expanding, pursuing new interests, or acquiring new skills. As the Samuel Johnson quote above suggests, curiosity is very much an end in itself. It’s curiosity that makes awe possible, curiosity that resists stagnation, mundanity, and meaninglessness at every turn. 

And while curiosity is commonly discussed as a function of intelligence or personality, for me, it has an almost spiritual quality. Curiosity is my soul identifying what belongs to it. Curiosity is the life force that drives me to continually learn and grow so that I am always encountering the world anew. This is the real danger of becoming incurious: when we’re incurious, nothing is miraculous. When we are curious, everything is.

I remember the moment that ignited my curiosity about birds: I saw a Northern Cardinal in a tree on a late winter morning, and in that moment, I was so struck by the sight of that little red bird that I thought, “I am going to learn everything there is to know about birds.” And I set about doing just that, and I’ve never tired of it. There’s so much to learn! That moment—that feeling of being indescribably “struck”–was curiosity. It was my soul saying, “Grow in this direction.”

There is nothing quite like discovering a new interest, acquiring a new skill, or embarking on a new course of study. These are the activities that reshape us so that we may continually encounter the world with a sense of childlike wonder and an eye for discovery. Indeed, our skills do a great deal more than aid us in productivity and survival. They are a means of interacting deeply and symbolically with our environment. They are tools for uncovering the sacred in the ordinary, for communing with the divine in everyday life. 

The more I think of it, the more I realize that curiosity lies at the heart of many of the topics I’ve been writing about here on The Used Life. Curiosity as life-force. Curiosity as an expression of the Self. Curiosity as the source of awe and perpetual childlike wonder. Something to think more about.