The Joy of Discovery

Did you watch Mad Arts as a kid? Or National Geographic as an inquisitive teenager? Or atleast Republic TV as a boring adult? Well let's not get too touchy about the boring adult part now XD. The point is, I am sure you have watched something when you wanted to feed that bug of curiosity which kept your mind jogging until it found a satisfactory explanation.

That bug of curiosity that ate into us when we were kids has somehow lost its way off lately. There are multiple reasons for that but a few I could point out (through personal observation and thoughtful self-contemplation) are that the hunger to know more has been encroached upon by the increased comfort in choosing conventional paths coupled with the dwindling interest amongst us to discover something by ourselves.

I can rewind back to the time when I was a kid. I used to read a book about the outer space so often that the gnawing desire to know everything about the topic was somewhat satisfied. Yet the effort and the level of curiosity did face a hit in the knees over the years. But, we can change that ofcourse. Let's start today.

The joy of discovering something by yourself is unparalleled isn't it? Let me walk you through this with a few examples. In school, cracking an algebraic equation by yourself for the first time felt like an achivement. In college if you were into coding, winning your first hackathon by de-bugging that error felt wholesome or if you were into cultural activities, composing a song by yourself by discovering the musical notes that would fit in just right was truly joyful. At work, submitting a deliverable driven through independent efforts and relentless grit was the first step towards making it big in your chosen field. If you are a businessman/woman, uncovering the right marketing and SEO tools that would set your brand apart is a bountiful experience. And the list just goes on.

Drawing your focus back - as we grow up, we start making decisions in our life that somehow fixate us to certain avenues. A lot of us are independent and hence make up our minds ourseleves, charting out what we want to do. But for a few of us, the realization about what our passion is or what is something that we would want to pursue as a full-time career or a hobby or anything for that matter, does not set in early. I will admit that I was one of the latter, not having discovered what I am truly good at for a long time. And honestly, its still a work-in-progress. But the drawback of not realising things early is being subject to people's opinions and general societal perceptions. Let's talk more about this.

To state it very simply, it sounds something along the lines of - "I think you would make a very good doctor" or "you should become a lawyer, it comes with deep pockets" or "start preparing for IAS or CA, your future will be secured". These are just a few examples of how our thinking is meddled with by people just because we aren't able to take a stand for ourselves. And this eventually leads to us narrowing our options and thinking in the same direction we are led in, slowing and unknowingly extinguishing the flame of discovery. We start thinking in a fixed pattern that we don't muster the courage to derail temporarily from what we are expected to do to discover what we actually want to do.

And hence, it becomes a habit to be told what to do, to be guided by structured thoughts, to not want to get to know something by ourselves because someone else has already done it and it works for them so it maybe will work for us too. And that is where we unknowingly silence that echo of curiosity that is supposed to be alive within us always because without the craving to essentially discover anything on our own, its hard to expand the horizon in which we want to exist.

Limiting oneself is not recommended. Shielding oneself in the cocoon of comfort of already knowing something and not being willing to undergo the process of metamorphosis to transform into a butterfly is not advisable.

Going forward, let's make a conscious effort to try discovering the smallest of things by ourselves. Not only does that induce us with pints of confidence but also make us our strongest believer that we can do or learn anything - only if we are inquisitive enough. The joy of discovery is a gift that we should present to ourselves because not being told what to do feels too damn good!

So, fire up your curiosity meters and jump right into the exhilaration of making self-aware decisions. It might take a while but hey when you actually do find out things by yourself, you are going to be unstoppable.