(IN)CURIOSITY
Hey, friends. Happy Equinox!
We're here once again at the changing of the guard, the changing of the season, the time.
With most of us here now living in the same hemisphere, we're looking closely at the coming of spring. Maybe this is the moment when your energy starts shifting and you feel like coming out of the cocoons of winter. Maybe this is the moment of planting seeds (literal or metaphorical) for the things you're ready to grow.
For me, this is always a time when my curiosity turns outward.
Through winter (especially in the places where winter is cold and snowy), my curiosity turns inward. Turns toward rest and reflection and introspection.
As the days lengthen and warm, I start to notice everything outside of myself.
Did I just hear birds in the morning? Is that an actual bud on the tree? When I make this commute that has been in the dark, is the sun now glaring in my eyes and even though I sort of hate squinting actually I love it?!?
Yesssss. All of it.
Curiouser and curiouser.
There is an idea, jijnasa, that comes to us along the lineages of advaita vedanta:
the desire to know.
The idea is that jijnasa is the starting point - the desire to know - which then leads us to inquiry, which leads us to the threshold of knowledge, and maybe just maybe to the deepest understandings of existence.
(which sounds fun)
But we have to start with the desire to know.
With curiosity.
I love this quote from Stephen Fry:
The only reason people do not know much is because
they do not care much. They are incurious.
Incuriosity is the oddest and most foolish failing there is.
(do you know stephen fry?? amazing actor, hilarious comedian, smart dude)
We can see the wisdom in the ancient texts and we can see the wisdom in a quippty quote from a modern thinker and performer. Either way, the wisdom is wise:
CURIOSITY IS COOOOOOOOOOL.
Being incurious (how odd and foolish!) sounds boring.
(and I'm pretty sure the old curiosity-killed-the-cat saying has always been meant to keep good people down)
SO!
What do you want to get curious about this season?
Is this your season for looking inward? Looking outward?
Do you want to get curious about the direct world around you? Do you want to learn a new skill/hobby/dance?
Do you want to read all about something you've always wanted to know? Do you want to meet new people and hear their stories?
Do you want to stare at the trees and the birds?
There are just sooooo many ways to be curious.
All we have to do is wake up and say, let's be interested in today! No way do we know everything there is to know! Today let's find out some new things!
All we have to do is show up to each day with a desire to know.
And if you want some old Stephen Fry, here he is doing allll the talking...
