The cost of curiosity

As a child, whenever I got a new toy, I had this uncontrollable urge to find out what the fuck was inside it. My parents would go to sleep and I would start taking it apart.

A car, a mechanical toy, something with lights in it. I wanted to get all the way inside and see the motor. Then I would open the motor, take the magnet out and unwind the wire. Every part had something else inside it that I wanted to understand.

I was beaten for doing that. That was a cost I paid for curiosity.

Outside, I would dig in the sand and look at plants, insects and worms. I would dissect things to find out how they worked. Looking back, I can see the same urge running through all of it: I wanted to figure out what was going on.

I still have that curiosity. I want to learn something and go as far into it as I can. Sometimes I feel that even at the furthest point, I am still roaming around inside language. I explain one thing with another thing, then that explanation needs explaining too.

I remember listening to Naval Ravikant on Joe Rogan before COVID, talking about what happens when you keep asking why. That sends me back to my own questions about origins. If God made this, who made God? I can keep asking. I recognise the urge to keep going, even when I cannot find a final answer.

More recently, listening to Aravind Srinivas, the co-founder of Perplexity, on Joe Rogan brought me back to curiosity itself. I have done nothing to become curious. I feel like a beneficiary of it. Sometimes I jokingly call it a disease. Whatever it is, I enjoy having it.

I'm never bored. There is so much to figure out. I think that is part of why I'm entrepreneurial. I like learning, building and seeing what happens when I try something.

Wealth and freedom, for me, mean being free to figure things out. Having the time and choice to follow something because it interests me. That is a life I enjoy.

The curiosity has also turned towards the person doing the looking. My thoughts, my beliefs, my experience. I am trying to dissect the observer as well. Who is this person who wants to understand everything? I don't know. I find the enquiry fun.

The Hindu idea of creation, preservation and destruction, associated with Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, interests me too. I see all three in human life. We create things, maintain them and take them apart. That is my own way of looking at the idea.

I'm still curious about what is inside. These days, that includes me.