Curiosity

To some degree or another we all are curious about things; curious about objects, living things, how things work, how minds work; in general we are curious about ourselves and the world around us. But to each one of us there are others who seem to have no curiosity at all and we have a hard time understanding how those others can go through life without a sense of wonder or pass by things that obviously need to be checked out, studied, and commented on. What we fail to appreciate or recognize is that these unobservant and incurious people look in directions we don’t think to and probably wonder why we are so lacking any inquisitiveness. Because everyone is curious in different ways and everyone sees things from their own point of view it is natural that they think that what they are curious about is what everyone else is curious about and cannot understand why, when they are excited about something new and strange to them, others aren’t just as excited. This is understandable since our world revolves around us, but in aid of understanding and growth we could at least attempt to be understanding about others’ interests, and even evince some interest in them ourselves. Don’t you think with a little effort we could enhance our own curiosity thereby promoting understanding?

Monsters

We all know about monsters, but none of us knows all about monsters; mostly we know about our own, whether they are friendly or malevolent toward us. Often our friendly monsters are symbols of fears we overcame when we were quite young; now we show that we have conquered and tamed those fears and their monster manifestations take on a soft, cuddly appearance, negating the fearful dominance they once held over us. Some of our monsters are expressions of our real and hoped-for powers; they can harm not only others, but can harm us as well. They may have become monsters because we are not really sure we have control over our feelings and thoughts and thus those feelings and thoughts are potentially as destructive to us as to others, whether they are threatening us or not. We can choose to view and raise our monsters to be fierce, but kind; unbending, but flexible; brave, but cautious. By making these choices we are giving ourselves back the opportunity to manage our own lives and not to be ruled by unreasonable fears and boundaries. We can learn to unleash our monsters only at appropriate moments, and not have them trample us at will. Shouldn’t we tame our monsters rather than let them control us?

The bell curve

Looking at virtually everything in life you will see that the bell curve can and does occur universally. From our galaxy and beyond, to the pattern of mold found in that one container in your refrigerator, the bell curve applies. Though we tend to think of them as such, bell curves are not exclusively reserved for grading or valuing people’s performances and attributes. For example, there are many trees in a forest and many different kinds of trees. If you look at their distribution you’ll find that trees of the same kind occur, smallest to largest in a bell curve as does the pattern of distribution for all trees. Or look at waves on a beach; not only are waves as they come ashore shaped like the curve against the curved shape of the shore, but the waves roll in in a bell curve pattern too: each seventh wave is larger than the others. The waves in between are not all the same size either but graduated largest to smallest then smallest to largest. Even the whole planet exhibits evidence of the curve with the solstices and equinoxes – the day/night changes happen fastest toward the solstices and slowest toward the equinoxes as with the swing of a pendulum. But it’s true – the bell curve does apply to behavior and mental tasks as well as the physical world. What we need to keep in mind is that although we all fit somewhere under a bell curve, that’s an interesting fact but not really important. It just is. We tend to let physical and mental testing play way too important a role in our lives, especially when measurement against a bell curve is involved. There are progressively stronger reactions (bell curve again) by the people at either end of the imposed curve that create standards no one could live up to. Nothing else, plants, animals, or stone even react to the naturally occurring curve.  We should ignore the bell curve when there are attempts to use it to categorize us. But we can admire the beauty of the curves that remain when the attemtps to categorize them are denied. Would you rather be categorized or enjoy the beauty of the bell curves all around you?