Friday, June 11, 2010

Being Curious

Bam!
There is an accident.
The metal hitting metal draws your attention.
You stop!
You are curious.
And so are the other 50 people who have already gathered around the accident site.
Perhaps you can help.
But are you really?
Really curious, I mean.

Something happens out of ordinary and you want to find out what happened.
But that is not being curious. Is it?

You are curious when a chance remark that you heard yesterday while talking to a colleague keeps bothering you till you find a solution why.
You are curious when you are unable to bridge the gap between an observation and the cause with your existing knowledge or logic.
You are curious when you when you see a spinning dinner plate and dig deeper to study its dynamics. (Feynman did that and went on to win a Nobel Prize for QED).

Curiousity takes away your sleep. It burns like a fire in your heart and mind.
Any thing else is just a waste of time.

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1 comment:

Anjana said...

I totally agree with this. But I dont think all other forms of curiosity (that are not related to inner motivations/ driven by a need to explore/ learn/ discover) are a waste of time. The other froms of curiosity enable you to 'outsource boredom'in a big way:-)

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