Curiosity

The #reverb10 prompt for today is: What did you do during the year to increase your curiosity? Actually that's not the exact wording because instead of increase they used some more New Agey word that I disliked enough to have forgotten. The soft-fuzzy, very self-indulgent and sometimes cutesy or gooey language of New Age sets my teeth on edge. It suggest wallowing in emotion and distrust of rationality and no interest in history.

I don't have to do anything to rev up my curiosity and haven't done, it's a deeply ingrained part of me. However, I choose to write about it on this blog, and not in the strictly personal and private 750 Words site that I've been doing each day, because older people often don't think about curiosity and some seem to have lost their curiosity -- some, but by no means all. The dull ones, the mentally arthritic whose main curiosity seems to be how much they can make or lose during the next visit to a casino. Or curiosity about what some celebrity whose lifestyle they abhor and envy is doing in her love life.

By curiosity, I mean, a sincere interest in the world around, the physical world, not just the home and the immediate family. The natural world is the most rewarding object of curiosity; of course, other people are endlessly fascinating. And then there's the whole world of all the arts and intellectual pursuits. I was lucky to learn curiosity as a trait from my mother who was certainly no intellectual but she read and wondered about things and formed her own opinions. I'm aware that many people didn't have that blessing early in life. Many lived in dull homes with narrow focuses -- but many escaped those homes and mindsets and have discovered the endless delight of discovery and that the areas offering discovery are almost boundless. Curiosity is not only for cats or children. Curiosity is for a fascinating and delightful life and for keeping the mind active and in good running order.