Saturday, February 7, 2015

Curiosity Killed the Fear

Spike the curious cat, taken from Wikimedia
I've been feeling bad a lot lately, and when I feel bad, it's mostly fear that I feel (occasionally anger). The fear is not rational, I believe, but is real nonetheless. It is a collection of sensations that are unpleasant and often interfere with my functioning, especially when they keep me from sleeping.

I try not to give in to baseless fear, but it's not easy. As I've said in this blog and elsewhere, fear is only one response to new phenomena. The other is curiosity. Instead of being afraid of changes in life, we can be curious about them, investigate their contours, see what there is to see that is interesting, amazing, strange, wondrous.

As we age, we experience more and more change, most of it unwanted, such as the death of loved ones, changes in physical capabilities, etc. How can we do something other than fear those changes? That's a good question. One way is to be curious about them. But how to do that? I don't know yet, but I'm going to work on it.