This Is Why You Should Embrace Your Curiosity

I’ve always been curious, looking at the world through invisible glasses that replaced objects, faces, and places with questions. In fact, when life gave me lemons, I asked why.

Sometimes this habit would get me into heated arguments, living up to its reputation of killing some cat that I’ve never actually seen in my life. Through irritated glares and exaggerated sighs, I came to find that a life controlled by curiosity resembled drinking salted water or digging a grave in a bottomless pit. Once I answered some questions, I just had more.

Furthermore, people wouldn’t always welcome my questions like how teachers are expected to in classrooms. “Things are just done this way” and relative acceptance of daily rituals and societal norms seemed to create a deficit of appreciation and need for curiosity.

What really gets under my skin is that schools have become more about making grades and getting accepted into prestigious schools than actually educating the future generations. Schools view students as numbers that will transform into products on an assembly line and students view schools as a boring job they have to do, another chore on a mandatory to-do list.

Additionally, knowledge has become assessed by standardized tests and cumulative grade point averages instead of what’s actually inside one’s head! And let’s be real…how much learning and (more importantly) REMEMBERING is actually taking place in school? People are way too concerned with passing courses that they’re just plugging and chugging: memorizing information for a big exam and then forgetting it.

School has become a stepping stone to a career: a place to “get in, get out, and get ahead.”

No one wants to stay in school forever…except me. Even when I’m not in school, I’m constantly feeding my desire to learn.

When I have kids, I want them to ask me questions. I mean hopefully they’ll hold of discussing the birds and the bees until I’ve formulated a helpful but PC response, but I think discussing and challenging others, even authority figures is vital. After all, how does one expect to move in the sticky concrete of life if he or she just keeps doing things the same way?

When it really comes down to it, curiosity is about learning…and I think life is about learning. Just like we heard in the opening scene of the iconic The Lion King, “there is far too much to take in here…more to find than can ever be found.” I’m spending the short time I have alive taking it all in and realizing my insignificance in a world so grand and vast.