I’ve always measured my curiosity level by how many library books I have checked out at one time. It’s over 20, not bad for me. I’m still pretty curious.
“To be curious is to be alive.” Katherine Edelman.
My curiosity is all over the place at times. For some 40 years, people held much of my curiosity. I learned a lot about what made them tick, why they did what they did and how to help them recognize their own feelings and failings, as well as successes.
The last 16 months, not so much. My curiosity has turned me back toward earlier, younger pursuits. Mostly nature, family, living in the outdoors, things like that. I often wanted to escape from the draining work of people over the years, but I never really got very far away from it. Every vacation was too short and when you came back, you were right back in the thick of things.
I guess that is normal in many cases. But I wished for something other than a normal life, just the same. I spent a fair bit of time wondering and trying to understand why a few people are a royal pain in the but. And then as a sidetone, I wondered why people would stand by and do nothing when the troublemakers seemed to take over.
We just don’t like fighting I guess. And that dislike made me read a lot of books about people and what made them so difficult to live and work with. It’s probably one or two people in a hundred that are this way, but they still take up a lot of your time. The first book that gave me a lot of courage was called Living With Difficult People by William Branson. It was about the main Personality Disorders in people, but it was well written for a layman instead of other psychiatrists. It helped me a lot.
Remember, I did not want to classify or pigeon hole people accourding to some disorder, I wanted to help them, I did not want to cancel them, I wanted to enable them.
Being naturally curious I read as many books as I could find on the subject and found a local author who was an expert in Heresies. He was a Lutheran scholar and so he knew a thing or two about heresy. Along with heresy is a ton of conflict. He taught me a lot through the lens of heresy and the trouble and divisiveness it breeds.
Anyhow, to survive the small amount of trouble over the years, I had to be really curious. I can’t see how you can have much of a life if you are not curious. I confess that it’s nice not to have to be curious about people for a while, not that I have them all figured out. I’m very glad to be curious about other things, important things that I left alone for many years.
I’m glad to be back in the court of the curious. It’s pretty neat out here. Here’s a spicture of my curiosity.
