A Solution To Being Stuck: How A Curious Mindset Helps In The Pursuit of Wisdom.
They often say the burden of being wise is often being faced with choices that are rooted in duality. Wisdom can be looked at as a gift. It's not common to everyone, but to those who use it, exercise its power to affect change.
As a child, we're curious. We are kind of engineered to experience a life of ease. We're wired to need things to be taken care of for us, and we're wired to trust everyone older than us to do that. We especially need love. These ingredients free our minds to be as inquisitive as they were meant to be. Whether or not we permanently experience a life of ease is another thing altogether but in any case, those memories during early childhood and the understanding that we form of the world during that time is vital for our navigation of it.
As we grow older, we tend to "adult" - yes, that’s a verb these days. Adulting, on one hand may be looked upon as a good thing because you’re taking on responsibility, but on another hand, the hand that’s less thought about, you’re constantly overpowering your childlike naive sense of the world. The world can be a dark place, and often our good natures are taken advantage of. This is how we end up internalizing our true feelings and learn to adjust to the ways of the world, rather than change the world to adjust to us. This is a challenging paradigm especially true in people of color.
Overcoming challenges in life might seem like a positive thing because there’s a sense of satisfaction to it, but oftentimes the reward for doing so is more challenges. To me, I describe it as an intricate design of circumstance in which we go through so that we're aware of the larger forces that exists in the world. Some call it the universe, but I call it God, as in the Almighty God.
When we have reached our breaking points and don't break, don't we get stronger? Doesn't a sword become sturdier the more it's hit during the forging process? Doesn't carbon dioxide turn into diamonds under the pressure of the world's gravity? Relying on that guiding force teaches us to embrace our curiosity and not rely on our own strengths, because our strengths have limitations. Like a child needs adults, we as adults need other people too. Even still, we become better at adapting to circumstances over time, becoming sharper challenge after challenge. If you are seeking wisdom, and begin the journey to find it, the things you tend to think about in opposition to challenges are solutions to problems. The justification is this, that if it’s within your power to find a solution, you will at least try.
The essence of humanity is curiosity. We learn and we pass down information and the next generation builds on the foundation and they begin their lives with an advantage. Over time you will arrive at a generation with so much passed down information that we're able to create the iPhone. Our curiosity of the outside world drives us within to the inside world. The ones who ponder and think on existence have all eventually realized that whatever we think, becomes reality.
"I think, therefore I am" - Socrates
Life has a system of rewards build into the fabric of society that can be seen as possessing a good life, but in reality the rewards are primarily based on working, output, or results. No matter how you slice it, a tree is known by the fruit it bears.
“No good tree bears bad fruit, nor does a bad tree bear good fruit. Each tree is recognized by its own fruit. People do not pick figs from thornbushes, or grapes from briers. - Luke 6:43-44
One of these rewards is realizing that the moment you’re in is the best one, and the only one. Society got one thing right, and that is to live in the moment because tomorrow is never promised.
We truly will never know when we’ve had enough acquisitions, accolades, or accomplishments, because our minds are infinite but our bodies are finite... There's always another great idea that comes to mind! The richest place in the world is the graveyard for a reason so please don’t think there is no point to the things you dream of accomplishing in this life, because there is. The dream itself might be stifling, frightening, and even paralyzing. But think about how the next generation can expand upon your work and deliver something unique to this world with a fresh perspective, compliments of your autonomous creativity.
The only caveat is the most important one. That without God, without love, none of the accolades matter. Yes, they are tangible and can still be useful, but you'll never truly be happy without a life of purpose and love. Although we only get one life to live, we still experience the ups and downs the same. Some experience a life of ease, never having to have disbanded their childlike naive sense of the world. Others having to rediscover what it's like to be free again like a child. Either way, wisdom comes when you keep moving forward. You might trip and stumble, but at least you’re stumbling forward.
Again, you can't connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backward. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. - Steve Jobs
When you're stuck, lean into your curiosity. Try something new. Your feet may not move while planted but at least if you lean forward into the unknown a little bit, a wind can come and push you into the first step you need to take. Life is short, so don't waste it being stagnant. You might as well just keep running, because the rewards are infinite in the unknown. Ask yourself if life can be better than what it currently is, and if so, start leaning!