"lefou, i'm afraid i've been thinking."
"a dangerous pastime"
"i know"
is there a rule against quoting disney movies in a blog? nonetheless, i have been thinking, and lefou is right -- it is a dangerous pastime. here's what i'm thinking: the motivating force of life for human kind is not love or justice or religion or relationships -- it's curiosity. and that may sound funny, but i'm actually a little devastated by this possibility. what causes millions of miserable people to open their eyes everyday with the expectancy of more misery? they want to know what's going to happen. their curiosity of what's coming spurs them to living when all other motivations fail. i'm convinced that were man to know his fate, however good or bad, he would have no interest in living it out anymore. so there's the first car in this train of thought.
second car: god remains silent for this reason. if curiosity is what motivates us to live, it is strategy for god to keep us deep in curiosity. somehow that curiosity is intended to be translated into trust and that trust is somehow intended to create a new motivation that supersedes curiosity and thrusts man into a "higher" form of thinking and living. but i don't know how i feel about this strategy because:
third car: when curiosity goes too long unsatisfied, the human spirit weakens. unanswered questions left to fester and stew diminish man's compulsion to continue. loss of curiosity (otherwise known as indifference) manifests itself as depression which is roughly equivalent to disinterest in living. it's like with LOST. i've dedicated myself to this storyline since its premiere, but so many questions have been introduced with no answers that i'm getting tired of trying to keep up. i'm seriously considering giving up on it. "what am i meant for?" is a curious question. left too long unanswered, man will give up the search.
fourth car: reading a book about man's purpose does not satisfy this curiosity. because man doesn't care about why humans exist. man cares about why HE exists...specifically and with as much detail as possible. fortune tellers don't make money predicting the fate of the world -- they make money giving detail. so man keeps going to sleep too late at night and waking up too early in the morning and eating food that often destroys his body more than it nourishes it because he is curious about how far he'll get and he wants to get there as fast as he can before his mortality is proven.
fifth car: i'm sick of curiosity. it plagues me and is beginning to have a reverse affect. it seems that surely my heart is bound to stop beating soon if it keeps pumping blood that isn't sure where to go.
what i want is to KNOW.
curious, isn't it?
Merry Christmas 2018
7 years ago
5 comments:
I'm afraid I can't board that third car on this train with you. While I agree that curiosity unquenched may cause despair on some level, at some point we have to find peace with the fact that our curiosity will never be fully quenched in this life. It's coming to understand that we will never know what lies ahead and in that find some comfort, because honestly, that's the closest thing we have to "knowing" what lies ahead. That no matter how much we think we're able to predict about what lies ahead because life (at times) just seems so predictable, the plain and simple truth is we have no clue for two reasons.
1) we have no idea what life will throw at us. Hurricanes, cancer, winning the lottery, love and death, we aren't in control of a lot of things in life.
2) we don't know what choices we ourselves will make in the future. If you're anything like me you find yourself changing constantly and with that comes a change in the decisions you make in life. But the bottom line is that our choices also effect (in part) how our lives play out. So unless you're one of those people who never make bad choices or change how your operate, even the choices you make down the road can be very unpredictable.
Those two factors have a mutually beneficial and yet mutually exclusive relationship all at the same time. It's hard to say which is more powerful or at what level they ultimately rely on one another, but that's how I find it to work. I can't say I know WHY, but that's a question I will die with regarding so many things in life and with that I'm strangely comfortable.
I think it's partially curiosity, but there's probably a lot of it that has to do with fear as well. Shakespeare wrote about the fear of the unknown, and that the unbearable mystery of death and "in the sleep of death, what dreams may come" keep us periling on in the miseries of this life which, at least, we are familiar with. Not that I'm a huge fan of Shakespeare, but I think there's something to be said about his familiarity with human nature.
Also, as Christians, I think the curiosity that spurs us on is meant to be tied more to a selflessness instead of being/becoming our primary motivation. Since "to live is Christ and to die is gain," it's implied that death would be the easy way out. I can only speak for me, but personally, curiosity alone wouldn't be enough to keep me around and comfort me through the heartaches of this life.
So maybe as human beings, our first response is to be motivated by curiosity or fear, but we also are given a reason to hope.
Hope that this life matters, that our pain will count for something, and that there is a beautifully miraculous plan behind it all. After the hope comes the trust.
I know I'm either making you cringe with all this christian-speak, or there's the small chance that I'm reminding you of a reason to hope too. I hope it's the latter....because I sure like you and would love to still be friends with you.
oh, and my middle name is Kathryn, so you weren't too far off. ;)
matt and blythe -- i agree with you completely. maybe i didn't communicate that part well in my blog. my thought is that we do need some questions to remain unanswered...the fact that our curiosity is never satisfied is perhaps what keeps us alive. but sometimes i feel there is an inbalance...an unhealthy one that causes us to despair more than hope. in fact, i kind of think curiosity is the spectrum that runs between despair (or fear) and hope and all the spaces inbetween. i don't want all my questions answered (i think it would make life pointless), but i feel like i need SOME answers...even just a few...just a few solid truths to keep my appetite whet for more.
and again, don't fret...this isn't my new philosophy...just something i'm thinking about.
i like turtles.
brilliant! the line about blood pumping when it doesn't know where to go...that's genius.
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