Stay Curious

A box left on the floor is not clutter.

It is a development.

Hunter approaches.

He sniffs. He circles. He puts his head inside. He withdraws. He puts his entire body inside.

Only then, presumably, does he reach a conclusion.

Humans tend to work in the opposite direction.

We decide what something means and then investigate accordingly.

A friend is quiet, so something must be wrong.

Someone disagrees with us, so we decide what kind of person they are.

An evening feels awkward, so we conclude we don't belong.

We are remarkably efficient at turning uncertainty into certainty.

Hunter seems more comfortable with not knowing.

Something has changed.

Interesting.

Something unexpected has appeared.

Worth a look.

Perhaps curiosity is not simply the desire to know more.

Perhaps it is the willingness to leave a little space between what happens and the story we tell ourselves about it.

To sniff around before deciding.

To look inside the box.

To discover that what seemed threatening was harmless, what seemed uninteresting contained something wonderful, or what seemed to mean something meant nothing at all.

The world gets larger when we haven't already decided what it is.

Stay curious a little longer.

What might you discover if you didn't decide quite so quickly?