Are you being curious enough?

“Very few beings really seek knowledge in this world. Mortal or immortal, few really ask. On the contrary, they try to wring from the unknown the answers they have already shaped in their own minds — justifications, confirmations, forms of consolation without which they can’t go on. To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.”

― Anne Rice, ‘The Vampire Lestat’

Some of the most important discoveries I’ve made have come upon asking the extra question. Sometimes it’s the second or even the third “but why?” Even at the risk of being annoying to someone. Even at the risk that the rabbit hole would lead nowhere and time would be wasted.

Even at the risk that the answer to my question would destroy a lot of long-held beliefs and turn an ordered way of looking at things into Anne Rice’s “whirlwind” – a mess that would surely require soul-searching and a substantial clean-up effort.

It’s still worth it.

Are you being curious enough?