CURIOSITY'S TRIBUTE

April 16th, 2019

In the ancient world people from all parts of the globe had different belief systems with different gods but a similarity that threads through nearly all of these belief systems is the idea of paying tribute to their gods with some kind of sacrifice.  Within the cannon of Greek myths it was the smoke that rose from burnt offerings which sustained and nourished the gods, presumably to make the gods favorable to mankind and bring about good rains and good harvests, essentially the good life.  This is, in other words, a trade-off.  Sacrifice some food now to make sure tomorrow is better.

A much sidelined concept in the modern adult world is curiosity.

Curiosity is something relegated to the unimportant and much forgotten world of children.

And yet curiosity can breed a near obsessive productivity.

Such a deep dive into a subject creates an expert.

And in a workforce of replaceable cogs, nothing is safer than a unique skillset.

But unlike the gods of ancient Greece and those that still remain in current traditions, Curiosity is a deity that can bestow a real superpower upon those who are willing to pay the tribute.

Unfortunately, unlike churches which take money, or the ancient gods of Greece that preferred the smoke of burnt foods, curiosity accepts only the most valuable of resources that we as people have:

Time.

The most inane things fight for this single resource: social media, entertainment, mediocre jobs, asinine social gatherings, and often they win over things that we find far more important if directly questioned: things like family, exercise, reading.

Curiously enough, few are quick to mention curiosity as an important part of this group. 

And yet curiosity holds within it’s power the greatest treasures to bestow.  Treasures that might free a person of a mediocre job and the need for entertainment created by other people.  Curiosity, unlike all other things we might trade-off our time for, has the ability to show us a path in life that supersedes our need for a job and simultaneously become our entertainment, and finally frees up the time that is usually partitioned among many things when we fail to find a way to combine them all into one.

Even if such sounds too good to be true, like a cake we can eat and also continue to have,

It’s perhaps a small enough sacrifice to wonder about such a possibility,

and perhaps our wondering might breed a growing curiosity that can lead us into new and interesting realms of possibility that we’ve never before considered,

but that

takes time.

This episode references Episode 342: Phoning The Void