Curiosity v. Couch: The Epic Battle

My son is insatiably curious. He’s approaching 2 years old and it seems that his curiosity is fundamentally unquenchable. He is at the age where playing would really more accurately be described as exploring. When we play in his room, he roams from his toybox, to his bookshelf, to his pile of blocks, to his dresser drawers. Every stop along the way elicits the same kind of response from him. “Ohh!” and “Wow!” are his most frequently uttered words. He is constantly pulling his toys out of his toybox, almost like he’s hoping to discover something hidden in the bottom that he had forgotten about. From the moment his day starts, my son is driven by this curiosity.

Of course, this curiosity that cannot be slicked is sometimes a burden on those of us around him. Josiah quickly gets into things he shouldn’t be playing with and wants to explore drawers and cabinets full of things that 20 month old hands would more likely ruin than anything else. But even the energy we expend redirecting his pursuits is a  symptom of the kind of life he lives every day. Josiah’s curiosity drives him to explore. It motivates him to find something new.

When he comes up against a boundary, either one that is due to his limited abilities or parental restraint, he comes apart at the seams. He cannot conceive of a reason why anyone would not want to experience life the way he wants to experience it. Why wouldn’t you want to go outside right now? Why would you not want to play in the dirt and eat this bug? Why wouldn’t you want to climb up on the back of the couch and teeter perilously close to the edge like this?

These are questions he cannot answer, because they are no brainers to him. Our home and the outside world are wide open spaces for him to take in all that life has to offer him. Every experience he has, every discovery he makes is proof that this is the way life is supposed to be and it drives him to find new experiences and make new discoveries until he simply cannot keep his eyes open and he falls asleep only to wake up ready to discover new worlds and hidden treasure boxes.

Now, contrast that with his dad. When I wake up in the morning, my first thought is usually something like, “How long until I get to go back to sleep?” It takes a good jog, shower and grooming session before I feel like engaging anything in a meaningful way. The mental task list that begins to compile in my brain as I am taking a shower is discouragingly long by the time I head out the door and by the time I sit down in my chair in the office, I’m already tired. At the end of a day of work, my son is running circles around me, which only serves to highlight the vast difference between his limitless curiosity and my penchant for tuning out.

Tuning out is easy when there is very little mystery left in life. At this point, I pretty much know what is in all the drawers and cabinets in my house, I don’t need to go exploring. I’ve been outside and I’ve had a few years of experience with grass, trees, dirt and bugs and I’d rather just stay inside where I can stay clean and I don’t run the risk of getting bugs on me.

    I really think I’ve lost something. There was a time in my life where I would play outside exploring the world around me until it was too dark to see. I wouldn’t come inside, even if I had to go to the bathroom. I would scarf down my dinner so that I wouldn’t waste one minute of precious daylight. There was life to be lived! But now, it seems like, most days, I just sit and think about what I’m missing while I fill my time with TV shows and Facebook. Instead of being insatiably curious, more often than not, I just feel sleepy.