Bored?

"Curiosity might be pictured as being made up of chains of small questions extending outwards, sometimes over huge distances, from a central hub composed of a few blunt, large questions. In childhood we ask, 'Why is there good and evil?' 'How does nature work?' 'Why am I me?' If circumstances and temperament allow, we then build on these questions during adulthood, our curiosity encompassing more and more of the world until at some point we may reach that elusive stage where we are bored by nothing. The blunt large questions become connected to smaller, apparently esoteric ones. We end up wondering about flies on the sides of mountains or about a particular fresco on the wall of a sixteenth-century palace. We start to care about the foreign policy of a long-dead Iberian monarch or about the role of peat in the Thirty Years' War."

These words were written by Alain De Botton in "The Art of Travel." I was recently introduced to him by a friend and have come to respect him as a writer. The particular line that prompted me to include this here was "...our curiosity encompassing more and more of the world until at some point we may reach that elusive stage where we are bored by nothing." Wouldn't you love to be bored by nothing? I believe that being inquisitive is a virtue. Without curiosity, learning becomes terribly difficult. Curiosity sparks enthusiasm, which leads to the enjoyment of life, even in its most simple moments.

Something to think about for the new year: becoming more curious instead of more comfortable with the status quo.