Curiosity may have killed a cat or two, but can you imagine life without it? We’d be puffed up with certainty; willfully ignorant blobs happy to consume whatever dreck’s put in front of us, happy to parrot any conspiracy theory or celebrity gossip or whatever the latest outrage is that algorithmic or human manipulators want us to spread. Doesn’t sound too exciting, does it?
So, yeah, curiosity is pretty essential for a mindful, deliberate life. It prevents us from stagnating and beating our heads against the walls of our own echo chambers. It keeps us open to new ideas and fresh experiences, and lets us see old ideas and experiences through a different lens. There’s something exciting about it when a cogent argument forces you to reconsider a previous certainty. Curiosity does require a certain flexibility. The willingness to encounter new people and ideas. The humility to question dearly held opinions. And the fortitude to admit the possibility that, yes, even you can be wrong sometimes.
It also encompasses the willingness to experiment.
Much of curiosity is a way of seeing life as an ongoing series of experiments. Sure, with a sample size of n=1, most of these experiments aren’t exactly scientific. But the neat thing is that the barrier to entry is fairly low. After all, you’re not committing to a permanent change. You’re only committing a few days or weeks or months of your time, and at the end you’ll know exactly what works for you and what doesn’t. Want to institute a new habit? Well, make it an experiment. Set its parameters and give it a valid timeframe. Make sure you run it long enough that the initial motivational “high” has time to fade. Can you sustain the new habit even when the novelty has worn off? Do you want to sustain it beyond the initial time frame? Not every habit that you thought you should cultivate is actually worth the trouble. Maybe its time hasn’t come. Or maybe it’s not right for you. But if you never give it a serious try, how will you know if you’re passing on a potentially life-changing opportunity?
Experiments, however, are only one manifestation of curiosity. Another one is the openness to challenge as well as opportunity. Sure, there are challenges that you wouldn’t wish on anyone. Some paths are devastating, and we can only hope that life won’t ask us to travel them. But when serendipity comes knocking, we’d better be ready and willing to open the door, warily, maybe, but full of curiosity.
Openness to experimentation as well as to serendipity leads to new insights and experiences, and what could be more critical for us writers? After all, it’s these insights and experiences that provide the raw material and the fuel for our stories. They give us new ideas, open new windows upon the world, and enhance our empathy. They let us create three-dimensional characters, textured settings, and believable plots. In short, they provide the foundation for the many-layered, nuanced stories that will pique a reader’s curiosity.