Curious about Curiosity?
When it arose after weeks of deep depression, curiosity snuck in like a thief; it seized the moment without resistance.
It could have been triggered along with the glints of sunshine gently illuminating the day through mixed clouds. It may have been that enough rest without a wake-up time allowed the day to begin in flow. Perhaps it was just one of those days, inexplicable in its machinations, but curiosity was there.
Next, the thought, just a brief one, of inspiration crept in; what if being curious meant there were inspirations on the horizon? Though distant, perhaps, a horizon was a great improvement over none at all. Certainly.
I came inside from taking the sun’s morning rays and cold, fresh air, and prepared to write. My laptop glowed to life and the words, already forming on my mind, were ready to be expressed. Well-formed phrases danced out in steady measure, but at a pace that required conscious effort and drove meaning out from my psyche. This is a great improvement compared to some days, where the writing had been possible, but there were no curiosities creeping in behind them.
I wonder what will be read, what will be written, what will be thought, what welcome feelings will drive the text? — In that order.
Is this quite a different order than many other days? Yes, indeed, as I am different each day, and this is what curiosity demands. It asks for an observation about change and noticing simply what is there, outside of my mood or control. Feeling that things outside my control are still my fault is a common indictment; my mood dictates a selfish victimhood and judgment among the world’s phenomena.
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To be or not to be self-centred, that is the distinction of a day well-begun, and well-lived. Do you often wonder, as I seldom do, what external events will show up to lubricate my day and get me where I need to go? Perhaps it is seldom for me because of my deeply entrenched limiting belief that I don’t deserve help; whatever comes to me is only what I can muster. Or, it could be that my closed mind filters out the gifts of a powerless existence before I can grasp them.
These gifts are sent and poised in grace, to balance a powerful structure each day, against the bleak impression that I have no control, yet I blame myself and others in their own right. Noticing gifts, so that my day has hope, is my only imperative. Ignoring them, is a day lived in self-centred peril, where I will certainly reap what I sow, in scarcity of hope.
Without the central gifts of powerlessness and desperation beset on both sides by the gifts of powerful balances in the universe, I wander with no middle path to be seen. With the balances in place, it is easier (one hour at a time) to illuminate the grim footsteps I thought I already tried to walk before, yesterday, to no avail.
Easier is a good start. It shows me something different, through worn tracks of my feeble attempts to navigate deep snow that shows me where I stumbled, again. Something different may trigger another curiosity that maybe, just maybe, it is not the futility of groundhog day again.
Curiosity is a thief — not because it steals — but because it sneaks so effectively into a closed system of painful thoughts and feelings. When it is missing, it can be so easily forgotten and missing it is even hard to remember, but… When curiosity is there, it is a welcome invitee to the moment, heralding the coming of inspiration, perhaps, closely behind.
When it wishes you the potential of a moment better fulfilled, it also reflects its gifts and wishes well upon me. That is at least a connection point between us, where something can show up, among these pages and words and thoughts and deeds.
It requires no future possibility, for it is already fulfilled, in the moment of disconnection stolen away from emptiness, and granted instead a page full of something to be shared.
It is now shared.
