Please Be Curious: Why Curiosity Beats Passion and Power

Sometimes you search for passion, something so powerful it yanks you out of bed each morning and carries you through your day. At other times you try and summon a thing called will power, a kind of brute force you can use to pummel your way to something better.

When you think of passion, you imagine being swept off your feet. When you think of will power, you imagine yourself doing the sweeping.

But you probably know from experience that passion has a tendency to come and go, it rises and falls, and will power is often a sham and thus short lived.

What Happens After the Dust Settles?

What you really need is something to sustain you, something that has staying power. I believe that thing is curiosity.

In the movies, we see the hero riding in on a white horse, kicking down doors, and defeating the foe (will power) in order to gather the heroine in his arms, lift her onto the horse, and ride off into the sunset (passion). It’s thrilling stuff and it keeps us on the edges of our seats, but we never get to see what happens after the dust settles. The movies never show us how the hero and heroine piece together the rest of their lives and do the real work of building intimacy, and intimacy is what it’s really all about.

I can’t recall the last time I rode home on a white horse, and Carol would object if I made a habit of kicking down the door. Instead, I arrive home in a sedan and open the door with a key. And it may be hard to believe, but sweeping her off her feet is not usually the first order of business. If it were, she’d eventually get annoyed. Do you mind? I’m in the middle of something here.

Instead, our time together usually begins with a simple question. How was your day?

Interest and Intimacy: A Lasting Relationship

Real love, the kind that lasts, is sustained through two people taking an interest in one another. Over time, that interest builds intimacy. It’s quiet, but it takes them farther below the surface than passion and power could ever hope to. It’s the same with creativity.

To create something, you have to take an interest in it and build on that interest. You have to cultivate and sustain a daily kind of curiosity.

If you think about it, we abandon our ideas and projects for the same reason we might abandon a lover. We lose interest. The newness fades. The passion subsides. Our will power wanes.

Curiosity is the Cornerstone

But curiosity, I have found, has a subtle kind of magic in it. The more you are able to cultivate it, the more apt you are to continue your quest. The simple need to know can take you farther than you might imagine.

Getting curious got me off the couch. The little questions I started asking myself lead me to take my first steps. The resulting answers and further questions I stumbled upon are the things that keep me moving forward. It can do the same for you.

This is why I have asked you to please be curious. It’s the cornerstone of creativity. It’s the guiding force behind everything else we’ll explore here, and we’ll revisit it often as we look at other ways to lead a life of quiet inspiration.

Be curious. Stay alert. Keep asking questions. They’ll lead you somewhere. I promise.

What to Do With All These Questions and Answers

Once you get in the habit of asking questions and seeking the answers, you’ll need a way to record your findings. It’s time to collect your thoughts, which is the second way to lead a life of quiet inspiration and the thing we’ll be exploring in the next chapter. I hope you’re curious.

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