The Contagious Catch of Curiosity

Magicians were few and far between during my sordid youth, but I’ll never forget the magic spell they cast on me and the others in their audience. White rabbits were extracted from black hats. Some beautiful lady was sawn in half. A volunteer just disappeared right before our eyes. Slight of hands made card decks do wonders. It would take days to unscramble all that hocus pocus of the curious magician on our school stage.

Certain human attributes are both helpful and hurtful. Like a magnet, they seem to have two poles: one positive and the other negative. Or, perhaps these qualities are better captured in the Chinese philosophy which perceives all of life made up of opposites, which are called the yin and yang. While curiosity killed the proverbial cat, it has also led to life-saving discoveries like the long-awaited vaccine. Wisdom is achieved by balancing these opposing forces.

Curiosity is a clear example of one of those insatiable characteristics we bear in common as humans. We enter this existence with curiosity and spend our childhood and youth satisfying this appetite to know more about this universe home of ours. We have this innate feeling that something unknown is doing we don’t know what, but we aim to find out.

Curiosity has been at the heart of scientific discoveries that have led to cures or geographic adventures that have founded new countries. And in the field of religion, this natural curiosity sends us all to discover something about the nature of a possible Creator, no matter what name we give. If we dare, we even become curious about ourselves.

Physicist and chemist Marie Curie warned that we should “Be less curious about people and more curious about ideas.” When curiosity downgrades itself into prying nosiness or tacky meddling, that noble virtue of wonder has now turned itself toward plunder. We use curiosity as a survival tactic in the game of being one up on thy neighbor. Or maybe we play the less harmful game of simply being curious for the sake of knowing what’s up. When we know that, then we can keep ourselves clean as a whistle — detached and disinterested and safe.

Lulu Miller, in her recent book, Why Fish Don’t Exist, puts it like this: “The best way to ensure you don’t miss them [the good things in store], these gifts, the trick that has helped me squint at the bleakness and see more clearly, is to admit, with every breath, that you have no idea of what you are looking at. To examine each object in the avalanche of Chaos with curiosity, with doubt.”

Curiously, there is very little in the Good Book about the subject. At least on the lines. In between the lines, one discovers the same game at work. The yin and the yang of curiosity. Remember Lot’s wife. Or Job’s quest for figuring out God. Paul struggling to understand himself. On the Jericho road, the Scribe and the Pharisee were only curious about that victim. Somehow, in the life of Jesus, we see in the absence of the subject, the very presence of someone who has figured out the balance. He operates from the perspective that is more caring than curious. Like the Samaritan, he sees that victim’s need more than he wonders about the cause of what will happen if he gets involved. He never stoops to snoop, but accepts people where they are, as they are. Like us, though, even Jesus had his moments. He died with that ultimate curiosity: “My God, why…?” Wouldn’t we really like to know.