Friday, March 28, 2014

Curiosity for Subsistence



Most of us hold ourselves back when we should be reaching out and most of the time we never see a need to change. Every such picture tells a story , that - we have somehow landed in a comfort zone and not giving that extra. Extra effort,  extra hour, extra question , or that extra feedback..

This 'extra' thing followed us from our school life itself. Remember ? Yeah ECA :-) (extra curricular activity !! ). These activities helped us to learn the values of teamwork, individual and group responsibility, physical strength and endurance, competition, diversity, and a sense of culture and community. Extracurricular activities provided us a channel for reinforcing the lessons learned in the classroom. Debating was one of them, which found very less participants (at least in my school) - a very few students opted or was leading in this area. Personally I never liked those guys! I felt they got into a habit of 'extra' questioning and was very irritating. Well, that was my own personal perception. 

Now when I look back at those days I believe this  probably helped those kids to inculcate that spirit of questioning at things. Either in open forum or silently under their mind and the leading cause was 'knowledge' - which is what probably they gleaned. Class teacher always used to encourage saying - Q's are Q's, there is not right or wrong Q.

I follow Buddhism as a philosophy where it tells one basic thing - that "everything in the universe embodies the law of cause and effect".  So if "Questioning OR curiosity" is the cause - the effect is "knowledge".

In school,  my sitting choice was the second row bench (even though I make gangs now also proclaiming that I was also always a 'last bench-er' ;-)). Let me admit, I used to hesitate to ask Q's. Fear was - what the other will think about it !! But I was always self-aware about my own personal growth and  used to cover it somehow. But that reverse model took hell lot of time from me, and I did understood it very profoundly that - curiosity is the leading cause of knowledge and that extra curricular activity was part of a well-rounded education.

Today when I look at our youngsters coming and joining us as a freshers or intermediate in the corporates, less or more I do see that tendency there as well.. where they DO  NOT  show enough curiosity to learn that 'extra' thing or question much and tend to settle down. This eventually cost us very heavy and that wrong pick demands lot of your bandwidth and becomes an overhead. This probably because we hire for skills and ignore attitude? .. right hire is always a mystery to me though!


Anyway - lets be curious , admit (an eager confession!) , learn , assess and learn - otherwise the real pressure that keeps us on the wrong path will be our self-generated one!  I am sure this will definitely help us to be creative in our word, action and deed :-)  !!


I am not sure how many 'W's or 'H' can satiate your curiosity while putting your question across, BUT just remember -  curiosity (not that rover!)  can KILL the cat , however we probably just wanted to experience how curiosity freed that cat! :-) 



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