I saw this framed poster in a gift shop I passed yesterday: “Blessed are the curious for they shall have an adventure.”*

The trouble is, curiosity soon feels like hard work.  It turns into a lot of reading, conversing, investigating, pondering, journeying.

Two options.

Option One:

Humans struggle with complexity.  We download from past experiences to explain our present ones – or the experience of others, and we evolve heuristics, like, A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.  That’s fine – if you want to cage the bird in your hand, but if you’re a bird conservationist, you might prefer the birds being in the bushes.

The temptation is to stay where you are, in  a world more determined for you than by you; okay, it may lack dynamism and adventure, there may not be a lot of creativity to it, but you know how things are and what will and won’t happen.   From time to time you may take the opportunity to blame others for this world when it doesn’t work, or blame the system, the politicians, the employer.**

Option Two:

Identify your curiosity – it may be something which excites you or angers you.  Either way, it’s a beginning.  Find out more this thing.  It’s the age of google, so this part isn’t hard.  Start following clues and leads.  See where you’re taken – the adventure has begun.

Before I finish, two things.  Firstly, I wish I could tell you it’s not going to be hard, but future hopes and possibilities don’t exist yet, they lie beyond the present-moment frustrations and struggles, and they need you to bring them into existence.  Secondly, I know something about you.  I know you have amazing talents and abilities and can tell you what they are.

Curious?

(*I just had to include this from a friend who has become very curious; it feels to fit well here.  She describes it in this way: ‘Like Alice following the white rabbit, I had come to a crossroads, and found myself having a conversation with the Cheshire Cat.  “Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” I said.  “That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,” the cat said back to me.  “I don’t much care where….” I said.  “Then it doesn’t matter which way you go,” said the Cat.  “….so long as I get somewhere,” I explained.  It all starts with knowing you can’t stay here and knowing you can’t go back there.’  You don’t know where you’ll end up, but it’s better than here.)

(**One of the things which comes from being curious to find out more is we discover things don’t work because of us, not because of others.)