Curiosity: I Must Know | V. B. Bonny

A lifetime of asking why - and learning to find the answers myself.

I learnt something in decades. Or perhaps I should say, I learnt it from the time my consciousness began noticing that there were two lanes in front of me.

I was barely ten when I first saw myself standing outside gates.

I don't remember who had said it first. Someone knew someone. Something was going to happen. Something was going to percolate down to me one day.

I didn't know what that something was.

But I waited for it.

The seasons changed. People around me seemed to get served. One by one, they received whatever was being poured. They filled their cups with impenetrable knowledge.

And I waited there with my eyes wide open, holding an empty bag of curiosity, When will my turn come? Am I worthy of it?

So I waited for the shower of knowledge, triggered three vicious cycle.

Give me something

Show me something.

Teach me something.

But curiosity has an inconvenient habit.

It invites more questions. And often unanswered questions feel like a moth getting close to the yellow lamp in dark alleys.

Why not me? At least give me something. Why are you not asking me? Why are you showing them and not me?

We somehow begin to watch more carefully, their eyes, their hands and their faces.

A closed fist tells us that perhaps our curiosity hurts. A deflected gaze tells us we have asked too much. A pause shows us... our WHY's are affecting them, we prefer not asking them at all.

Whys aren't merely questions we ask people.

Even books, a pair of hands that hold skill, and eyes that get teary or annoyed or a thin smile teaches us more than a 350 page information.

Was it behind their eyes? On their shelves? Behind a subscription?

I had discovered another lane.

If nobody was going to teach me, I would find it myself. And that lane worked.

The lane was wider, every new thing I discovered fed something inside me.

You learn one thing and our curiosity became hungry for the next. I found an answer and immediately found another question hiding behind it.

But there was a price.

Time.

The second lane charged time as currency. We get caught up with new knowledge that someone else could have shown us in an afternoon.

Then the other lane had drawbacks too …It was time dependent... It took years and years to catch up with that knowledge, every new information was satiating my curiosity but they charged time as currency.

Then you see another person who had chosen not to learn...had a shaky voice, denying any new answer and hiding their hands behind the bag, not accepting it.

And this voice invited someone else from the crowd to step forward. “Give it to me. I'll do it. …FOR YOU.”

And one would stand there thinking, "Why not me? I know how to do it. I learnt how. I figured it out. I had spent years figuring things out."

The stage has tilted.

The stage had two ways of climbing. One side had a steep, almost effortless slope. The other had stairs. More stairs. And the more you climbed, the more you saw being added.

This is a strange loop and this loop created isolation, stairs were enormous while other side felt easier.

This curiosity lands us into more improvisation, more perfection loop, hoping if I be perfect I get similar stage to someone who chose not to pursue WHY.

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Curiosity became improvisation.

2

Improvisation became competence.

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Competence became perfection.

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2

3

This is bargaining.

If we cannot receive what they received, we will become so capable that the difference will disappear. It didn't.

The more capable we became, the more we sometimes feel alone with that capability.

And then came the word we began to resent.

“Nothing.”

"You know nothing."

Nothing feels like someone had stabbed the entire history of how we had learned. Because we had spent years refusing to know nothing.

If I didn't know something, I had to know it.

If I couldn't find the answer, I had to find which drawer it was locked.

If someone knew something I didn't, I wanted to know how they had learnt it.

So “You know nothing,” became, inside my head: Then I must know that thing. I hated that word.

Because somewhere along the way, my curiosity had stopped being merely curiosity.

We had begun believing we must be everything. And our brain never sleeps until and unless it learns that one missing puzzle.

A why is never just a why anymore.

It is like a door. And once we see a locked door, we want to know what is behind it. Who put it there. Why it is locked. Who has the key. How they got the key. So I waited for the shower of knowledge, triggering three vicious cycles.

The goal was never to prove we are superior, but to appreciate the lane that we took, that devoured our years decoding every WHY that arose when we stared out of our rusted window.

I simply want to know - the shortest route to that stage, no more climbing stairs. The maddening circus of circling around questions, where we had spent years gripping lucrative bars and someone deciding for you.

Not Yet.

We all know what it feels like to wait for someone who chose to decide we aren't ready. We also know what it costs to find the key myself.

So these days, when I meet someone who knows something I don't, perhaps I no longer need the answer first.

I still have a bag.

It is still full of curiosity. So many whys, but now I just don't wait outside the gate anymore