As a child I was a curious kid. I know it is not an ideal statement to start a blog with. But I was, and that is not really the type of child parents wants. Parents want you to do well, but without asking questions that could make their life difficult. So as I grew up my questions also grew up. I started question the one thing Indian children are not allowed to question, “THE GOD”. I don’t have problem with the concept. I just want to know the meaning of the things you do in the name of GOD. So as a child you expect them to know everything. But it is not like that. My mom used to just accept that she never was a curious kid and never asked her parents anything. ‘I just did whatever was told because I was afraid of my parents’ was her standard response. And without knowing my curiosity was turned into a privilege.
What I didn’t realise back then is, if the curiosity is not fed properly, it starts to diminish. Looking back I think, I was more curious 8-9 years ago then I am now (I have started feeding my curiosity 4 times a day and that is more times than I actually eat). And as far as I remember; I loved being curious about anything and everything. Everything was a mystery and everything was answer to something else. Over the period of time I lost interest in many things because no one was answering the questions I was asking, and no, Google does not have answer to everything! That lack of interest cost me in general interest in life.
I have had instances where people ask me why are you interested in certain things if it doesn’t affect you day to day life and these are the same people who would spend hours on gossiping about other people’s life which was even more remotely affecting their own life. And I agree few times curiosity is stupid. To give you an example: recently I was talking to a friend and we had curiosity about the how did older generations found out about poisons? I mean did someone eat it and died and they remaining people declared, that can kill you don’t eat it. But is it not worth being curious like how? Also biggest curiosity has to be about food. Especially Indian food! How did people made so many delicious dishes? Who Invented panner? Who invented puranpoli? Or Gulabjam for that matter? How can you decide to try and deep fry something and add it to sugar syrup? JUST HOW?!!
We are the scroll down generation. And yes we do spend alot of time on social media (which is not actually helping us with curiosity). So are we the least curious generation? I mean sure scientist are doing great and so is Elon Musk! Technology is going ahead within a blink of an eye. And we need to work alot just to catch up. But the scroll down generation is not happy and do think it has something to do with how we treat our little curiosities. I never see people talking about how fascinating little day to day things can be. People should go “I mean HOW DID THEY DO IT” or “how do you do it more often”. Just for the sake of your healthy brain.
Humans do well when they use their own brains more. And that happens when you are obsessively curious about one thing or moderately curious about every other thing. Because to find answers you need to apply the logic and no matter how smart your computer is, you do need logic to find answers to your curiosities. So make sure you feed your curiosity, even if anyone is not. Find people who know answers. May be scroll down to find correct people. And if you are past reviving your curiosity, help a child to find answers. May be, just may be, you would find that joy again.
Remember world will always try to rush you in doing things their way, but most of times you should be able to say, it is my way or highway, that too with a lot of swag! And nothing but curiosity and ways to find answers to those curiosities can give you confidence to say that.
A Heart-felt world 