Curious

Recently, I have had considerable time to think about what drives me through my everyday life. Why do I continue to read and question and explore and write? Why do I continue to write in my journal? Surely by now, after living 59 years, I should have run out of revelations and reasons to talk to myself. Yet, something fuels my need to ask questions, to look over the next hill, and to wonder about stuff...any stuff.

The fire in my soul and passion in my blood still warm these aging bones and jump start a mind that could easily have been left in neutral to idle until my reserves ran dry. Maybe it is the memory of so many souls I met while working with Social Security so many years ago, folks I helped to claim their golden years retirement -- only to quickly bore themselves to death. Perhaps they were able to suppress the instinct that keeps so many rising with the sun each day.

At the most basic level, I think I plunge into each day, headlong and hell-bent because I am curious...

Mick

Curious

The pilot light for the whole human race,
Burns silently in the back of our minds,
Waiting patiently through time and space,
Sparking life, as the adventure unwinds.
Though ineffable, we know that it's there,
Teasing us onward to make the next move,
Reaching beyond the dark hundred-yard stare,
Paths to open and restraints to remove.
It frees up our minds, and it lets us dance
With the wind, and with flights of fancy wild,
Fires the will and the urge to take a chance -
Embrace the unknown as a new-born child.
Our most human idiosyncrasy -
Our insatiable curiosity.

Mick McKellar
June 2009