If curiosity is excitement about the unknown, fear is its opposite. Fear is resistance to the unfamiliar. While curiosity has its foundations in hope and optimism, fear stems from caution and pessimism. These two forces are in a constant struggle within the minds of every person.
Tag: curiosity
Grow Beyond the Space You Occupy
The great trap you must avoid is allowing the world to direct your curiosity onto things you have no care for. It is the default state of ordinary people to push their interests and concerns onto whoever will listen. Nature abhors a vacuum, and those with authority will rush to fill the vacuum they perceive in your head. If you can sidestep these social pressures, you can direct your own learning onto the exceptional path you have chosen.
The Moment You’ve Been Waiting For
Our lives are spent building up to more important moments, later, the moments when we’ll be happy. But when those moments come, we’re not happier. In fact, we’re already looking ahead to the next big moments: an upcoming trip, a big project being completed, meeting up with friends, getting that great thing you ordered online, finding your next favorite book, meal, drink, experience. What if that wonderful moment we’ve been waiting for is this one, right now?
A Guide to the Basic Anxiety of Life
Underlying much of what we do is an uncertainty, an anxiety, a fear, doubts, dissatisfaction … And we react to these anxieties, dissatisfaction and uncertainty in so many unhelpful ways: we seek distraction, we eat unhealthy food, we procrastinate, we get caught in a cycle of anxiety and unhappiness, we lash out at others, we dwell in our loneliness, and then we get in denial about it all. If we could learn to deal with the basic anxiety of life, we would have much more ease and less struggle.
How to Make Friends
I’ve been lucky enough to make a handful of good friends, awesome people who are sucking the juice out of life, who wake up every day with gratitude and energy. I’m lucky to have them, and it makes me reflect on what I’ve done right, and what they do all the time when making connections with people. Here’s what I’ve learned. It’s not a comprehensive guide, nor will it work for everyone. I still hope it’s useful.
Letting Go of Distractions
Today I deleted several apps from my phone: Twitter, Reddit, Feedly, Snapchat, the N.Y. Times app, and more. I’m letting go of distractions, or at least learning to. In fact, I made a list of things I’m letting go of.
Child Labor In School And Out
School-days, I believe, are the unhappiest in the whole span of human existence. They are full of dull, unintelligible tasks, new and unpleasant ordinances, brutal violations of common sense and common decency. It doesn’t take a reasonably bright boy long to discover that most of what is rammed into him is nonsense, and that no one really cares very much whether he learns it or not.
Prisms & Paradoxes
Unschooling for me conjures up prisms, paradoxes, and unlimited travel. Time well spent and freedom. The “un” in life. Have you ever stood at a window and looked at something happening on the other side? Have you ever thought that it looked inviting and fun? And yet at the same time, you know you cannot enter. You cannot get to the other side. That is school. A place where you are shut up and can only see the world through a dark, twisted, distorted, and foggy window. And your world, your life, is being caged within four walls where it is desperately cold. And you wish you could get outside.
Adolf Hitler: How Could a Monster Succeed in Blinding a Nation?
Is it still possible in today’s Germany to escape the realization that without the mistreatment of children, without a form of child-rearing based on violence to inculcate blind obedience, there would not have been a Hitler and his followers? And thus not millions of murdered victims either? Probably every thinking person in the post-war period has wondered at some time or other how it could have happened that a human being devised a gigantic machinery of death and found millions of helpers to set it in motion.
Approaching Life with Beginner’s Mind
What is beginner’s mind? It’s dropping our expectations and preconceived ideas about something, and seeing things with an open mind, fresh eyes, just like a beginner. If you’ve ever learned something new, you can remember what that’s like: you’re probably confused, because you don’t know how to do whatever you’re learning, but you’re also looking at everything as if it’s brand new, perhaps with curiosity and wonder. That’s beginner’s mind.