C is for Curious

In my very first blog post, I mentioned that some of my ideas for posts would probably come from my dad's journal about his childhood that he gave me for Christmas a few years ago. It's a thick, bound volume, with writing prompts for every day of the year. The pages are small though, not much bigger than slightly over-sized index cards, so I think he had to "condense" some of his thoughts. Even so, there's one that says a lot and seemed a perfect subject for my "C" entry.

The prompt is, "Do you remember being really curious about something?" His response was, "My youth was spent being curious about everything...[from] how can fish breathe underwater to how can earthworms burrow through the soil."

Reading a relatively simple statement like that made me think how thirsty youngsters are for knowledge and how "uncurious" many people become later in life about even the most basic things. I don't know when I last thought about how a car works or why the sky is blue or anything else like that. I'm not a technical, scientific or great spatial relational person, so that accounts for my taking such things for granted to a point, but I think it also has to do with the quote by Oscar Wilde on my blog, in that people often just go along in life and exist, without truly living, missing out on the experience that is our world.

Obviously we can't face every day with gusto, but I would love to rediscover some of the curiosity I and most of us had as children, not approaching everything in a childlike manner, but at least with some sense of wonder and a desire to learn something new or to reawaken some knowledge long forgotten or ignored.

Curiosity may have "killed" many cats, but I can only see its benefits for us humans in the majority of circumstances. What will learn or discover today?