Humans seem to have an innate curiosity. They want to know. Not just small things, like ‘is it going to rain tomorrow?’, or ‘does the refrigerator light stay on when the door is shut?’ But big wonders, such as, ‘Why am I here’? ‘How big is the universe’? ‘How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood’? The result of this curiosity is the obtaining of knowledge. The path between curiosity and knowledge is learning. We want to know so we learn in order to find out. People looked up and wondered what those lights they saw in the sky were. So they built instruments that magnified these lights giving them a better view than just their naked eyes could. They discovered that while some were just bright dots of light, others were actually other worlds (planets). Curiosity of what these other worlds might look like, led them to create vehicles that could go to those distant worlds and allow them to see them close up. Curiosity begets knowledge and knowledge begets growth.
However, not everyone wants to know things. Some people are simply incurious. This may be due to any number of reasons. They might be satisfied with their current level of knowledge (ignorance is bliss?). They may have difficulty learning. Or, perhaps they simply don’t care. While knowing is growing, being perpetually incurious is stagnation. When a body of water gets stagnant, it begins to emit bad odors (I’ll skip the science lesson here). The same goes for incurious people as well. No, they don’t literally stink (unless they don’t shower); rather they emit an “aroma” of ignorance. It’s in their conversations (if you decide to leave me I’m going with you), their philosophy (noting is impossible unless you can’t do it) - virtual every aspect of their life. I’m sure you’ve seen them, people who simply drift through life never wishing to know anything new. They’re content to believe the earth is flat, that raindrops are tear-shaped, that Humpty Dumpty was an egg and that trickle-down economics works. Now, I don’t mean people of different educational levels (we all can’t be Einstein’s), but rather people who don’t care to be curious; people who don’t want to learn; people who refuse to ask questions (the only way to gain knowledge).
Obviously, everyone isn’t curious about the same things. If they were, society wouldn’t have gotten too far. What would have happened if Adam had only been curious about why the sky was blue and not about what Eve was hiding behind her fig leaf? Yes, it’s our curiosity that makes us grow. So go on, be curious and ask those questions.
How big IS the universe? Why DO we dream? Do these jeans make my butt look fat?
Shuhak 