Dear fellow daily scholars,
Take time to play, be curious, use the resources around you and allow your imagination to flourish. There's a saying that curiosity killed the cat. I researched this proverb a bit before doing this post and found that curiosity replaced the word care. The original proverb being care killed the cat.
I read an article from Psychology Today, that was titled, Did Curiosity Really Kill the Cat? Curiosity is the best remedy for fear. This article was written by Mario Livio Ph.D. I found this article quite interesting. According to the article care had referred to grief or worry. This original proverb would make more sense grief and worry causes stress and anxiety which leads to health issues and misery. Misery does kill, but does curiosity?
As we grow up, I believe we become complacent and live inside of our comfort zone. We suppress our curiosity and imagination. Stop looking at the things right in front of you, step back and see everything. Allow yourself to be curious and be imaginative. As I always say though this is your life, it's your decision.
I observed my daughter while playing store one time. She would purchase all kinds of random things from her room such as clothes from her closet, stuffed animals off her bed, and random toys from her toy chest. I found this interesting because she would barely purchase anything that was just on the shelf of her little grocery store stand. It made me realize that we get caught up with the things right in front of us and we lose sight of all the other stuff around us. It was such a simple playful thing that she did, but it had a profound impact on me. Why do only see what is on the shelf of our grocery store stand? Why is it hard for us to include all of the other things around us and bring our imagination to life?
There is no easy answer to these questions. I would venture to say that the answer would be different for every person as we all have different experiences that we have been through and due to that we have a different perspective on life. It could have been that we were taught to pay attention to only what's happening right now and right in front of us. It could be the civilization and society that we live in wants us to only see what's in front of us. It could be that we are just too busy to be able to stop and observe and allow our curiosity and imagination to take over. Whatever the answer to the questions above is for your life, don't let that stop you now. Now you know what I know and that is to find time to allow your imagination to flourish.
Why should you allow your curiosity and imagination to flourish? Well, for one, you may find the solution to a difficult problem that you are having in your life. You also may learn something new. You will definitely learn how to utilize the resources that are readily available to you.
Some people don't like the internet and technology. I find it somewhat fascinating. I am not a doom scroller, (a person who mindlessly scrolls around on the internet looking at stuff that is not educational and just takes up time) I use the internet for learning. If there is something that I don't know how to do, I just look it up on youtube. It's so easy to find solutions to just about any problem because everyone is trying to share knowledge online. I can watch videos from Ph.D professors at major universities that I would normally never get to hear from just because they posted a video on youtube or some online channel. Isn't that awesome? This was just an example of something that I realized I do that is similar to my daughter playing store.
Without imagination we would be mindless zombies, we wouldn't have houses, and we wouldn't have cars. It doesn't take a genius to create these things. It just takes a person with a lot of imagination, a lot guts and the willingness to play and create things.
I watched my daughter play with her little play kitchen and she would take the most obscene random food items and mesh them together and put them in a bowl and call it something wild and feed it to me. I would fake eat it and sometimes say, "Oh, this is amazing!" and sometimes I might say, "Eeewwww!" and we would both laugh as she tried to make something else. This type of play was exciting, explorative and fun. It's great to explore new things and try new ideas. Some things may work and some things may not but we will learn from both scenarios. Just like in Letters of Observations 1 - 1 Thing I Have Learned as a Parent, as long as we keep at it, we won't fail.
We need to be more like my daughter and find ways to explore, create and have fresh ideas at our work and in our life. I hope this helped you learn something new and I hope that you take the time to play, be imaginative and be curious.
From your humble fellow daily scholar,
Nathan