“I just want to stay curious”

As the late, great Heath Ledger once said in reference to his work, “I just want to stay curious”. I read this quote from one of his interviews when I was young, in my pre-teens, in the wake of his passing and my subsequent need to grasp onto everything I could learn about him. I would spend my school nights deep in google and IMDB trying to find any scrap of information I could on the man. Out of everything I found, that one line he uttered has stuck with me ever since. When talking about his movies and increasingly unconventional roles, Heath repeatedly mentioned that his main goal was to not get too bored or too comfortable. The most important thing to him was to be trying new things, to not become stagnant.

Getting older and trying to find my own way in the world, this message has been living on the edge of my brain during every decision that I make. I am naturally someone who gets consistently restless, not so much frequently or dramatically, but consistently. If I go a length of time following too-regular of a routine, or wear out something I found interesting at one point because it was so fun or entertaining that it was all I wanted to do or think about, then I feel the slow creep of discontentment rise up in me. Nagging at me to mix it up.

Sometimes this is a small thing, easily satiated by trying a new restaurant, reading a new genre, going out with a friend I haven’t seen in a while, etc. But sometimes it requires more than that, sometimes it makes me want to completely turn my life upside-down, just to stay satisfied by it. The thing is, turning my life upside-down is not a sustainable solution. Even that is usually only a temporary fix. While there can be things to gain, there can also be a lot to lose.

In seeking out these fixes, I realized that I had been approaching them with the goal of trying to discover something that would eventually hold my interest indefinitely, something that would never bore me, that I would never get sick of. Only recently have I had the revelation that nothing I do will ever give me complete, utter contentment that would last the rest of my life, and that continuing to aim for this would only lead to disappointment and increasing anxiety that I could never achieve happiness.

As a means of balance, I’ve started trying to remind myself on a daily basis to just stay curious – whether it be in small ways or big ways. By simply making an effort to stay actively interested in what’s going on around me and present enough to ask questions or explore them further it can make a big impact on the things that I do and how I perceive them. In line with this, I’ve been trying to say “no” to things less, to say yes to doing things I wouldn’t normally just because I didn’t feel like it or think it would be very interesting to me. I’ve learned though, that doing things like this actually help keep life surprisingly fascinating.

This new path is in part what’s led me to this blog, I want to write about things that I find intriguing or thought provoking and share them out into the world. There’s not much aim other than that and to share my thoughts, this may seem like too broad of a topic or too unfocused, but I hope that you can find even in some small ways, sparks of curiosity from this site and what I choose to put on it. I’m open to any topics and ideas, so please feel free to comment and share your own curiosities with me on this journey. I hope you stick around and always, stay curious.

All my love,
Sam