Curiouser and Curiouser

Cheri Sabraw suggested I write a piece on curiosity and why, maybe how, it paralyzes me. The line she had read was The power of my curiosity paralyzes me. Like most things, the sentence has more meanings than one realizes when one writes it or reads it for the first time.

Curiosity is very powerful. It has driven human advancement from the trees and plains of prehistory to the houses and skyscrapers of today. Along the way it has spawned wars, built civilizations (and destroyed them), and spread humankind all over the world. It is, in my belief, an instinct. It is not learned, it exists in most (if not all) sentient animals.

What we humans have done is learn to focus that instinct. Instead of just jumping from thing to thing, like your cat does, we develop interests, we create disciplines, and we establish schools to cultivate these things. Even within these schools, we break down the curiosity paths into departments and specialties.

This is how we have created and evolved doctors, lawyers, scientists, politicians, philosophers, warriors, artists of all disciplines, and all the myriad endeavors of human beings.

And, above all, we idolize the Renaissance Man, the jack of all trades. The poet who paints and crafts and questions and explains. The Leonardo Da Vincis. Well, after we subject them to trials on charges of heresy, perhaps.

The sentence that piqued Cheri's curiosity really just means I am undisciplined. I never learned to focus my energy into one or two primary fields. I find everything linked together in some manner and each new thing I learn triggers some wonder about how that impacts (or impacted) another thing.

For instance, the sentence was in a piece about traveling through the desert which touched on a dam (hardly mentioned), a bridge (hardly mentioned), low and high desert, a meteor crater, geology (more hinted at than mentioned), and human development and expansion throughout the world.

I cannot sum up what I think about these various things in a paragraph, maybe not in an entire blog, but maybe in a chapter of a book. And, while considering each, I am drawn to yet other subjects (henceforth known as "bright shiny things") that I think they relate to. I begin to ramble in my writing. My mind roams through the vast landscape of ideas and subjects in my head and promptly gets lost. I find myself constantly forcing myself back onto the original path and failing more often than not.

The person who has learned to focus his curiosity has created a sort of compass inside his intellect to which he can easily refer when needed. While he may see things of tangential interest along his path of study, he knows his direction and sticks to it. He resists the urge to wander off to that tourist attraction 20 miles off the highway and stays focused on his destination.

When I traveled out to California and back, there were many things which distracted me. Bright shiny things that drew my interest. But I stuck mostly to my goal and resisted. I had set a timetable. And I have learned that I must abide by a timetable in order to accomplish any goal. Otherwise, one goal gets dropped in favor of another, and then yet another, and so on.

I can do this when traveling the highways. Perhaps that's because I can see a destination. I cannot do this when traveling through life. Eventually, so many bright shiny things appear all at once and I am stuck in the middle of a huge crossroads with too many possibilities. I am, that is to say, paralyzed. Unable to choose a direction. Even if I choose a direction, I still crowd my brain with thoughts of what I might have found along a different road.

I want to split myself into many and travel all of them.

Linda mentioned that she found she didn't have the energy to pursue all the things she wanted. While I definitely understand that, it isn't my problem. I just don't have the time. I am amazed at how well some people can manage their time effectively. I am in awe of that ability and jealous of it. I cannot manage time effectively at all. Sleep interferes the most, actually. When I was a young man, I could function on a few short hours of sleep each day and still maintain concentration where needed. Now that I am no longer young, the 20 hour day is no longer possible and the 48 hour day is a distant memory. Perhaps that candle I used to burn at both ends has reached the middle.

Still, I go through life spinning my mental wheels.


[1043/1044/913]