Curiosity

Hi, 

Over the past couple of weeks, I keep finding myself watching videos of Jimmy Carr performing. He is delightful. Watching clips of stand-up comedy shows is not a novel thing for the different doom-scrolling platforms, the novel thing is that Jimmy Carr, the comedian, is not doing comedy in these clips. 

All of these platforms are being flooded with clips of Jimmy Carr giving life advice, and for all intents and purposes, it is very profound. 

At first it kind of broke my brain.

It all started with his appearance on The Modern Wisdom Podcast, where I spent more time in reflection than I did in laughter. 

Before we jump into this week's topic, here is one of the best quotes from that podcast,

“An interesting life requires sacrificing all the other potential interesting lives one could have had.”

(this quote has nothing to do with this week’s topic, I just really like it.)

This week, I want to talk about curiosity. 

I need to confess on the front here, that I had a major realization as I prepped for this week's topic. I typically judge someone else’s curiosity on how interesting I perceive them to be. This is obviously an incorrect frame for curiosity. 

The more I have thought about it, I actually don’t have a good way to judge someone else’s curiosity other than their ability to let go of incorrect information and opinions. 

I think of curiosity less as interests in a wide variety of subjects.

My definition is shifting towards someone’s willingness to go on an adventure. 

Curiosity is the catalyst that pushes you towards connecting the dots between information you know and the information you don’t. 

Getting to know someone deeper is going on the journey back through their life. Starting a business is machete-ing your way through a thicket all to see if someone wants your thing. Learning a topic is searching under rocks and over mountains for new pieces of information. 

Curiosity is a general state of openness to new information and opinions.  

The tricky part about this is that the thing that we see is someone with a lot of interests or hobbies and they come off as curious by the pure volume of things they learn about. 

But what about the people who like what they like? There is an Alex Hormozi quote where he essentially says that he just likes to work. People get mad at him because he talks about how much work it takes to do what he does, but what they don’t understand is that he is living the life he wants to live. 

Where is the curiosity in working all day? 

The curiosity is in the path he, and other people like him blaze. 

Your only focus is on your family? 

The curiosity is in two people with completely different childhoods trying to figure out how to give their children a better life than they had. 

Your only focus is league of legends? 

That is someone who is trying to figure out what it would take to be the best they can in a specific realm. 

Curiosity is not about being eccentric or eclectic, it is all about being open. It is about asking a question and being willing for the answer to be something you never thought it would be. 

So the next time you are making dinner with someone and they say does it need more salt? Maybe you toss some salt in to see if it did. Not just because you want more salt, but because you are open to see if it could taste better. 

Cheers, 

Kyle