To Survive These Years, Let Us Be Curious | 1.5.25

I don’t much believe in regret, don’t find value in the looking back of it all. We can’t undo what we did, can’t reach our bony little fingers back through some wormholes of time to un-stir the pots we stirred, can’t remove the stitches we sewed into the fabric of our lives. We did what we did, we are who we are because of it.

We can look forward, sure, can aim our sights at higher grounds, those shining hills of moral graciousness. We can learn from what we’ve done, all those unchangeable actions that acted like dominos to unveil the giant picture of what we’ve become, and there is hope in this. Even still, the future is as foreign as the past if you look at it right, what’s coming is going to come, like a wind blowing across the surface of some globe-spanning ocean, all we can do is try to adjust our sails before it arrives.

That’s what this is then, this first week of a brand new year, that’s what it’s always been.

Now is the time to adjust our sails, now is the time to point ourselves at the land we’re seeking.

I’m not going to sugar coat, I don’t do that here and if you’ve been around a spell, you know it by now. I think we’re in for a wild gale, I think we’re in for a tumultuous few years and I think the tempest is just now building on the far horizon. I think the clouds just above the sea line are growing, I think they are taking on that green hue that means something primeval and feral is building, and I think we’re going to need to hold tight to the rails of these boats we’re on. Together, more than all other things, together.

So how do we get through it, what direction do we point our bows, how do we survive the hurricane that could come? I don’t know what it will be for all of you, but I know my plan, and I’d like to share it with you:

I’m going to stay curious.

That’s it, really. I’m going to work until I’m exhausted to replace judgement with curiosity, frustration with fascination. I know it sounds hokey, I know it sounds overly simple and it probably is, but it’s what I’ve got, and it’s where I’m going.

I believe curiosity to be the foundation of compassion, and I believe compassion to be the roof that protects us. If we can stay curious, seek to discover the why behind the actions we don’t understand, the where the motivations came from, the when of the events that led to the shaping of their souls, all those that test the patience we’re working towards, perhaps then it dispels the anger that might otherwise build.

Perhaps we have more power than we believe, and the root of all that power is understanding. All divides across all time measured comes from a lack of this, a lack of knowledge shared between those screaming from both sides of a chasm. We are made to be Venn Diagrams, but somewhere along the way our circles stopped overlapping.

Curiosity beyond only this, too, is what I’m aiming for. While it may be the net that catches that butterflies of our misconceptions, it can also capture so much more. There IS magic left out there, despite the lies a frozen January on the precipice of such change will tell you, despite the poisoned honey it will pour in your ear. There is so much magic and we can seek it with our wide-eyed inquisitiveness. We can find it with our cameras, our words, the walks we take daily, the errands we run, the conversations we have, the strangers we meet.

It’s here, I think, that our salvation lives. It’s in the asking of questions, not the passing of judgements, it’s in the wondering, not the declarations. It’s in the what if, not the no, because, and it’s in the naiveté, that taboo noun we run from like we’re too sophisticated for it.

I think we’ve been so busy pointing fingers, we forgot to use our hands for better things, forgot that they were made for holding, for soothing, for investigating, for making. We’ve spent so many years idle watching the separations grow between us all that we forgot our own curiosity, forgot that it’s this that all great discoveries have always been born from—around us, within us.

I still believe in magic, and I always will, and I’m tired of pretending it’s been washed away in some tsunami we all somehow lost the recollection of. We’re fresh into this new year, just days into a brand new lap around a sun that still burns and throws heat from miles and miles away, and I just want to remind you that we get to decide where to go from here, though the big bad they might try to tell you otherwise. We’re still the captains of our ships, we’re still the hands that raise our sails, we’re still the defiance against the typhoon that is certainly coming.

Stay curious, and let it transform itself into compassion for all you don’t understand. It happens on its own, we only have to practice one for the other to grow, and you can start with either I think. Seek first to understand, to relate, to find that gorgeous middle bit where what we are overlaps with whatever they are, and go from there. See if you can’t widen it, see if you can’t inflate it like a balloon of celebration, see if you can’t make the lonely bits on the edge of the Venn just a bit smaller.

Seek magic, appreciate it when you do find it, and tell those eyes in that head of yours that they aim forward for a reason.

There is magic left,

so let us be curious.

Let us discover.

Haiku on Life by Tyler Knott Gregson

---

Song of the Week

---