How to Rekindle Your Innate Curiosity
In order for diversive curiosity to be valuable, we have to nurture it so that it may transform into epistemic curiosity
As the parents of any toddler will tell you, children are naturally curious. They eat dirt, play with fire, and run their chubby little fingers over any and every surface imaginable; they’ll ask you a hundred questions every hour and make a mundane car ride seem like the most fascinating journey in the world.
From the moment we are born to the day we die, humans display an innate desire to explore the unknown. By the time they are just five years old, the average person has already asked over forty thousand questions, and studies have shown that, when presented with different patterns, babies as young as two months old prefer those that are unfamiliar to them. Even amongst adults, we see people in constant pursuit of the new and the next. In fact, it’s this insatiable drive for information that drives much of the global economy today.
This instinct for curiosity is rooted deep in our evolution. In order for our ancestors to be able to survive, they needed to know how to hunt and gather food. To do this, they had to be able to track footprints, craft weapons, navigate difficult terrain, and communicate amongst one another. Knowledge was necessary for survival, so those who best pursued it were rewarded.
It makes sense then, that the act of curiosity is closely tied to pleasure. Neuroscientists at the California Institute of Technology conducted an experiment where they located the part of the brain that was stimulated with curiosity. They did this by asking forty undergraduate students trivia questions while they monitored their brain activity. The subjects were told to silently guess the answers to the questions in their head and indicate the level of curiosity they felt about finding out what the correct answer actually was.
Through this experiment, the researchers found that curiosity stimulates the part of the brain called the caudate nucleus, the same part of our brain that provides a rush of dopamine when we enjoy primal pleasures like food or sex. The drive for curiosity is literally written in our DNA.
Given all of this, it makes sense that curiosity, at its most basic level, is not unique to humans. Despite the link between curiosity and some of the most abstract and complex levels of thought humankind has to offer, some rudimentary forms of it can be found in even the simplest of worms. However, there is a critical difference between the curiosity of an ape or rodent and that of a human being. A golden retriever may be curious, but never has one managed to erect a skyscraper or launch a rocket to the moon.
At some point in our evolution, humans began to develop capacious memories. This means that we eventually developed enough “memory storage” to invest in knowledge thatwe had no immediate need for. Instead of looking for food every time we are hungry- we could store the locations plentiful in berries and nuts or wild game for later use. This allowed us to develop depth to our curiosity.
To get more specific, there are two main types of curiosity: diversive and epistemic. Diversive curiosity is the curiosity of a child- a fascination with everything novel and new. It’s this curiosity that companies like Facebook and Twitter take advantage of to design software that keeps you scrolling. Every time you click on a new youtube video or social post your brain gets a rush of dopamine and drives us to engage in the activity again and again.
Despite this seemingly negative effect of curiosity, diversive curiosity is actually incredibly valuable. It sparks our interest and motivates us to explore and discover new things. The problem, however, arises when these sparks of interest aren’t allowed to mature into something deeper. We end up fluttering from one interest to the next without ever gaining any real insight.
In order for diversive curiosity to be valuable, we have to nurture it and let it transform into a deeper desire for true understanding, or, epistemic curiosity.
Epistemic curiosity is what put men on the moon and built the Eiffel tower. It’s why scientists dedicated their entire lives to the study of a specific species of bird; it’s why people read books and spend hours digging for clues about ancient civilizations. Most importantly, however, epistemic curiosity allowed for the development of culture- arguably the single most defining characteristic of humankind.
Culture is not only the ability to learn from others around us but also those who came before us. Each person doesn’t have to independently discover how to cook or fish or fight but can learn and build off of what a previous generation has already figured out. Ideas could jump directly from mind to mind evolving and adapting far faster than our genetics.
When humans traveled from Africa to the deserts of Saudi Arabia, they didn’t need to wait for evolution to provide them with an adaptation that allowed them to survive. They could use their collective base of knowledge to figure out how to create shelters, dig for water, domesticate camels, and so on. As evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel puts it, “having culture is why we watch 3D TV and build cathedrals while our close genetic relative, chimps, sit in the forest as they have for millions of years cracking the same nuts and stones.”
Epistemic curiosity is not only responsible for the innovations and progress made by humankind all throughout history but continues to be one of the most (if not the most) valuable traits of the 21st century.
As we examined earlier, the ability to learn new skills quickly and competently is invaluable in today’s economy and simply being curious enables us to do this at a much higher level.
First of all, basic psychology shows us that when we are curious we learn better. At the British Museum in Bloomsbury, London, two psychologists Teodora Gliga and Katerina Begus have conducted a series of experiments to better understand curiosity. In one such experiment, they would show a baby two “toys” (simple puzzles that they could solve by performing the right sequence of pushes and pulls) and wait until they demonstrated interest in one or the other. After, they would choose a toy at random and demonstrate how it worked, before taking them both away. Ten minutes later, the researchers would return the toys to the baby and observe whether or not they played with the toys in the way that was taught.
In the end, the results were clear, the babies were far more likely to replicate the correct actions for the toys they had originally demonstrated interest in, showing the powerful benefits curiosity has on our ability to learn. Think about it this way, when you are curious about something, your mind expects and anticipates new ideas related to the subject- it is primed for learning.
Furthermore, and perhaps more importantly, learning is a skill, and, just like any other skill, it needs to be practiced. The more curious you are, the more you learn, and the more you learn, the better you get at it. The first time you learn a new skill, you will make countless mistakes. You will spend too long focusing on the wrong things and not enough time on what is important. You will ask the wrong questions and use the wrong resources. In the end, you will look back on your progress and see how inefficient and ineffective you were. And, although it may seem like a waste of time, it is actually a beautiful realization because the next time you have to learn something new, you will do it better.
Finally, curious people tend to know and understand more about the world around them. They have depth and breadth to their knowledge. As a society, we often make the mistake of focusing too much of our time and energy on one specific area of expertise. We wrongfully believe that getting very good at one particular skill will allow us to push boundaries and accomplish more. And, although this is true to a certain degree, innovation rarely comes from random sparks of inspiration and genius. Most great ideas are formed through unique connections made between seemingly unrelated pieces of knowledge, and the wider the range of people’s mental environment the better suited they are to making those creative connections that lead to true innovation.
Despite all these benefits, it’s an unfortunate reality of growing older that we tend to lose our natural sense of childlike wonder and curiosity. The world, once a place of wonder and fascination, becomes dull and mundane. Questions irritate rather than inspire, and we tend to consume rather than create.
However, if you look carefully, you will find people who defy this general rule. In history, there are plenty of examples of curious life-long learners from Da Vinci to Benjamin Franklin. In fact, you’ve probably experienced some of these lifelong learners in your own life. So, the question becomes: why do some of us lose our innate curiosity while others see it thrive?
Psychologists have developed a scale to measure what they call “need for cognition” or NFC, which is essentially the scientific measure of intellectual curiosity. The NFC scale is a simple questionnaire designed to qualitatively measure the “tendency of an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking”.
Because the actual test is slightly complicated to score, here is a simplified version. There are eighteen questions that you need to answer as either true or false, being as honest as possible:
- I would prefer complex to simple problems
- I like to have the responsibility of handling situations that involve lots of thinking.
- Thinking is not my idea of fun.
- I would rather do something that requires little thought than something that is sure to challenge my thinking abilities.
- I try to anticipate and avoid situations where there is a likely chance I will have to think in-depth about something.
- I find satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours.
- I only think as hard as I have to.
- I prefer to think about small, daily projects rather than long-term ones.
- I like tasks that require little thought once I’ve learned them.
- The idea of relying on thought to make my way to the top appeals to me.
- I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems.
- Learning new ways to think doesn’t excite me very much.
- I prefer my life to be filled with puzzles I can’t solve.
- The notion of thinking abstractly is appealing to me.
- I would prefer a task that is intellectual, difficult, and important than one that is somewhat important but doesn’t require much thought.
- I feel relief rather than satisfaction after completing a task that required a lot of mental effort.
- It’s enough for me that something gets the job done. I don’t care how or why it works.
- I usually end up deliberating about issues even when they don’t affect me personally.
If you answered “true” to most of the questions 1, 2, 6, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, and 18 and “false” to most of the others, then you probably have a higher NFC than the average person.
People with a high NFC are driven to understand the world around them. These are the people who love solving puzzles, reading books, and visiting museums. They find enjoyment in cognitively demanding tasks across a wide variety of domains and are constantly seeking out new knowledge and information.
The good news (or perhaps not if you scored well) is that your NFC is not set in stone. It is true that some may be more predisposed to curiosity than others, but curiosity is less an inherent trait and more a state of being dependent on the environment you are in.
The bad news is that the world we live in today is not well-suited for creating and nurturing curious individuals. And, unfortunately, this is not true just of the education system but the culture of society as a whole. Our achievement-based model of success, the rapidly increasing influence of technology and the internet, poorly designed standardized tests, an increasing focus on preparing students for specific jobs, and our ravaged attention spans have all, in combination, led to a largely incurious society.
So, the question now becomes, how can we develop intellectual curiosity within an environment that tends to stifle it?
Drawing from research on curiosity as well as my own personal experience, I’ve come up with three pillars for rekindling our innate curiosity and love for learning: underschedule, explore, and create. We will explore each of these ideas more in-depth, individually.
Note: This article was initially written with students in mind, but the suggestions below are applicable to all ages.
Pillar #1: Underschedule
Epistemic curiosity is born as a result of intellectual freedom. Fundamental to its nature is the fact that curiosity can’t be regimented or taught but nurtured and allowed to mature. For this to happen, we have to create an environment where our minds are able to focus wholly on the present moment, free from anxiety and stress. We must be able to pursue seemingly random and inconsequential strands of thought and see where they lead us.
Anxiety and curiosity are two opposing systems; fear kills curiosity. Research has shown that children who grow up in unstable environments at home are more likely to be incurious and uninterested in school. This makes sense as it’s difficult to concentrate on anything else when you’re worried about survival.
Marylin French once said, “An extraordinary education is concerned with learning; most are concerned with achieving: and for young minds, these two are nearly the opposite.” Unfortunately, our society’s obsession with success and achievements leads to a culture prevalent in stress and anxiety with little leisure time to explore interests and nurture curiosity. This is true both in the workplace and in schools.
Intrinsic and extrinsic motivation tends to be inversely related. The more people are rewarded for something, the less interested they are in what they have to do to get it. For example, a student who has been taught to focus on achievements and results and success will find it difficult to be engrossed in the process of writing a story or conducting a science experiment. When they are told that something will count for a grade they will end up finding that project or assignment less interesting; they’re so focused on the end result that they can’t find joy in the process of learning itself.
Students who learn to understand perform far better than students who feel pressured to learn to succeed. Researchers conducted an experiment where they separated eighth-grade students about to embark on a week-long science unit into two groups: understanding-oriented and success-oriented. Then, at the end of the week, they tested the student's ability to apply and transfer their new knowledge to a different context. Despite how well the students scored on the previous tests, the students who were understanding-oriented performed far better on this second assessment.
The point I’m trying to make here is that pressure kills learning, yet our school system is designed around a system that rewards achievements and success creating an environment ill-suited for learning and even less suited for cultivating the epistemically curious individuals the world needs. The combination of pressure from the state to do well on standardized tests and assessments along with the societal pressures of getting into a good university creates a culture that breeds stress and anxiety.
If we want to cultivate a love for learning, we must find a way to counteract these threats to our curiosity. We do this by “underscheduling” our time. Essentially, this means opening up large chunks of free time in your schedule where you can spend time with friends, work on passion projects, or just read a really good book.
In 2007, a team of researchers conducted an experiment of students attending a suburban high school and found that the amount of time students spent participating in structured activities was directly correlated to their self-reported levels of anxiety. The problem wasn’t with the activities themselves but, rather, the time they took up. As the researchers put it, “These increasing obligations and time demands are cutting into adolescents’ leisure experiences, which are critical for helping them discover their identities and release stress”
Underscheduling allows us to avoid this. Rather than cramming a ridiculous amount of work and commitments into our four years of high school, we commit to doing less. The idea is that by giving yourself plenty of unstructured and unscheduled free time you’ll not only be less stressed, but have the time to indulge in your curiosity and learning. Maybe, instead of taking five AP classes, you only take the three that you’re interested in and spend the extra time diving deeper into an idea discussed during class or going the extra mile on an interesting project you were assigned.
Furthermore, in order to create this free time, you will have to cut out all the commitments that you don’t find important. Rather than spreading yourself thin, you will dive deeply into a few areas that you are truly passionate about; quality over quantity. Not only will this clear up your schedule, but allow you to pursue the activities and classes you choose with more depth and, as a by-product, make you a more interesting and impressive candidate to college admissions officers.
By adopting the strategy of underscheduling your time, you will lead a calmer, more collected life free from the constant stress and pressure felt by most high school students. But, how much free time is enough? Where do you find that balance between work and play?
Cal Newport, the author who coined the term “underscheduling” in his book How to Be a High School Superstar, also introduced the idea of the student workday, which I believe to be the perfect strategy for creating the balanced lifestyle we are trying to achieve. The concept is simple: have a set cut-off point to your day. After this point you don’t think or touch your work; you are completely free to do as you please.
The advantages of this are two-fold. First, it creates separation between work and play which allows you to focus wholly on the task at hand. It’s easy to get stuck in this grey area where you aren’t exactly working but you aren’t relaxing either. You’re writing an essay, but the TV is on, or you’re studying for a test in a study group but the conversation keeps turning to who will win the fantasy league. When you implement a cut-off, you end up working with more focus and intensity in order to complete everything you need to do before your deadline. Then, when you reach your designated time, you are completely and totally free.
Now, ideally, this cut-off would be at dinnertime during the weekdays (except Friday) with half a day on either Sunday or Saturday. Although at first, this may seem absurd, I promise that with commitment and the right time management techniques (which we’ll get into during a later chapter) it’s possible. Obviously, adjust this schedule to meet your personal needs, but stretch yourself- you need less time than you think.
Personally, when I tried implementing this strategy in my own life I initially struggled with feelings of anxiety and guilt. It has been drilled into our heads that in order to be successful in high school and get into a “good” college we must take an absurd amount of AP classes, start multiple clubs, play a varsity sport (or maybe two), and volunteer at a local hospital. This has created a culture of “busyness” and “grinding” where students operate on four or five hours of sleep, consistently pull all-nighters- and are proud of it. So, as an ambitious student who bought into this mindset for most of their life, I was bound to feel a nagging sense of doubt as I transitioned into this new way of thinking, and it’s possible that you may too. However, there are two key things to remember if you begin to feel this way:
First, doing less doesn’t necessarily have to mean sacrificing getting into your dream college. In fact, I maintain that leading an underscheduled life, if done right, can actually help rather than hinder you. With your abundant free time, you’ll end up taking on interesting projects and developing valuable skills that will make you the kind of person colleges want on their campus.
Second, even if implementing this tactic did decrease your chances of getting into college, it would still be worth it. As we discussed earlier, the purpose of your high school education isn’t to get you into a prestigious university, but to develop you into a passionate, intellectually curious, kind human being. Again, I’m not denying the impact that a top-tier undergraduate education can have on your life, simply saying that the person you are is far more important.
In the end, although large portions of your newfound free-time should be spent hanging out with friends, playing video games, and binge-watching the latest episode of your favorite show, to maximize the effectiveness of this strategy in cultivating your curiosity you should also be using a good portion of this time to explore and create, which is where the next two pillars come into play.
Pillar #2: Explore
Daniel Ellis Berlyne was a British-Canadian psychologist working to understand why organisms seek out knowledge and experience- why they are curious. To do this, he conducted an experiment where he gave subjects geometric shapes of varying complexity to look at. The results showed that the more complex a shape the more time that subjects spent looking at it, until they didn’t. After the shapes reached a certain level of complexity, the subjects’ interest in them steadily dropped off.
This experiment demonstrates one of the key principles behind what drives curiosity: it is aroused, paradoxically, through both understanding and a lack of understanding. The idea is that having a base of information makes us aware of our own ignorance, creating a desire to know more. You can’t be curious about what would have happened if Napoleon hadn’t waited so long to pull his troops out of Russia during the Napoleonic Wars, if you don’t know what originally happened in the Napoleonic Wars. As the German philosopher Ludwig Feuerbach said, “man only wants to know what man can know. What lies beyond this region has no existence whatever for him; so for him it is also the object of no drive or wish whatsoever.”
This explains why curiosity is so situational. If you know nothing about the healthcare system, it’s unlikely that you’ll find that the latest bill on health care reform ignites your curiosity. On the other hand, if you’re an avid tennis player, you might find the latest news on who won the Wimbledon semi-finals to be incredibly interesting. Essentially, one of the biggest killers of curiosity is the lack of exposure to things to be curious about.
The purpose behind this pillar is to help you build a repertoire of knowledge that creates the mental environment in which curiosity can spark. This means exposing yourself to as many ideas and experiences as you possibly can. Attend lectures, go to film festivals, visit museums, and take classes at your local community college. Find open mics, read books, and listen to podcasts. Consume voraciously and get inspired. Even if you don’t feel curious, pretend you are; fake it ‘till you make it.
By doing this, you not only increase the bank of knowledge you have to draw from, but you are also put in positions where you can practice the skill of curiosity.
For the majority of this chapter, we have examined curiosity as a character trait, however, curiosity can also be viewed as a skill. Although the first spark of interest may come from within, knowing how to best cultivate and pursue that spark is an art that requires practice. When you make an effort to be constantly learning and experiencing new things, you start to learn how to ask questions, sort through biases and false information, and make connections between seemingly unrelated ideas.
Eventually, being the kind of person who is always seeking out new knowledge and experiences will become second-nature. However, as I mentioned before, during the initial stages you will have to make a very deliberate effort to get out there and pursue them. Specifically, for the first few months I would recommend trying to accomplish the following goals:
- One conversation with someone you find interesting every month. For example, maybe your dad knows someone who launched a tech startup or you met someone at a block party who had biked all the way across the US. Schedule a day to meet up for lunch or coffee and prepare a list of questions you would like to ask them in your head. We’ll get more into how to do this properly in the “Find a Calling” section of the book.
- One new experience every week. As mentioned earlier, this could be attending a film festival or participating in an improv group. You could attend a lecture at your local college, take a salsa class, or even just invite your friends over and learn how to barbecue. Whatever you choose, try and get diversity. The goal is to expand your horizons, and to do that you have to be willing to push yourself out of your comfort zone.
- One hour learning something new every day. This can be anything. Watch a YouTube video about Marie Antoniette and the French Revolution or the history of parkour. Read a book or an article. Teach yourself how to code or the basics of personal finance. You can choose a new topic everyday, however, I’ve found it to be far more motivating and enjoyable to pursue longer-term goals. At the end of the day, it’s up to you.
Obviously, you can decide to do more than this or less, but simply working towards these three goals will help you build momentum. It might be difficult to get in touch with the first person you want to talk to and you may find yourself stumbling over words and struggling to ask questions, but, eventually, you will find a rhythm. Someone will offer to introduce you to someone else and they, in turn, will do the same. You will grow more confident and the conversations will begin to flow.
The more you get yourself out there, the more opportunities will come your way. Ben Casnocha, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, investor, and author of the book My Startup Life calls this phenomenon “bulk positive randomness”. He explains that, oftentimes, the most meaningful experience comes from pure chance encounters. For example, you might meet your future business partner in a hostel while traveling through Spain or someone you met at a convention years ago could end up being the person who publishes your book.
Often, we chalk these occurrences up to chance or luck, when, although these factors do have influence, you can put yourself in the best possible position to get “lucky”. If you attend fifty lectures every year, you are far more likely to discover an idea that changes your life than if you had attended just one.
Opportunities, like money, compound. It may take some effort to get the ball rolling, but once it gets going it picks up additional speed and momentum with little extra work. The more opportunities you are exposed to the more you learn and experience, the more you grow. However, this is only true if you adopt the mindset of exploration and are prepared to take advantage of any opportunities that come your way.
Pillar #3: Create
The purpose of the second pillar was to build a foundation of knowledge upon which curiosity can spark. In this third and final pillar, we will go from being a passive recipient of ideas, to actively engaging and applying the knowledge we have collected.
Leo Burnett, the founder of a global advertising agency, said, “Curiosity about life in all its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people.” Great ideas don’t just come from nowhere; they are the product of serendipitous collisions between seemingly unrelated pieces of knowledge. So, the more curious we are, the more knowledge we collect, and the more we know, the easier it is to come up with great ideas and be creative.
But curiosity doesn’t just feed creativity. Creativity also feeds curiosity; when we create something new, we are forced to confront holes in our knowledge. For example, if we were trying to create a cover of Wonderwall by Oasis, we might realize that we don’t know how to play suspended 4th chords. In order to learn the song, we indulge in our curiosity and gain a little bit more knowledge than we had before. And, by leveraging your curiosity to accomplish something that is tangibly meaningful, your brain reinforces the idea that curiosity is both productive and valuable, making you more likely to pursue sparks of interest in the future.
Together curiosity, creativity, and knowledge create a positive feedback loop that looks something like this:
It’s true that we can’t force ourselves to be creative or feel curiosity, but by stretching ourselves to pursue and collect knowledge we can put ourselves in the best possible situation for them to happen. Once you break down that initial barrier, you enter the positive feedback loop described above, slowly growing more curious and creative. However, although simply collecting knowledge will boost your curiosity, deciding to apply this knowledge to create something new will facilitate and enhance this process even further.
Similar to what we discussed previously, it is valuable to set practical goals for yourself, to implement this pillar in your life. Personally, I have two main recommendations: First, work to master a skill (writing, coding, filmmaking, guitar, marketing, statistics, etc.) that will allow you to create value in the world. Second, always be working on a passion project.
The first recommendation is important because although creativity is valuable in it’s own right, it’s difficult to create anything meaningful without mastery over a certain craft. The famous American radio personality, Ira Glass, famously described what he called “the gap”. Essentially, when you first engage in creative work there is a gap between the vision you have in your head and what you actually create. It’s only through hours and hours of practice can you ever actually manage to align what’s in your head and reality.
My second recommendation is to always be working on a passion project. This project could be writing a book, building a youtube channel, competing in a film fest, or launching a non-profit. The only requirement is that you are actually creating something. So, learning to play the guitar wouldn’t be considered a passion project, however, writing and producing a song or album would.
When choosing these projects, try to experiment with a wide diversity of fields. Although it’s important to work on projects related to the skill you are trying to master, it’s also valuable to pursue diversity. If you’re trying to improve as a writer you should try working on passion projects like short stories, blog posts, or even writing a book, but you should also try your hand in unrelated areas of interest. As we’ve iterated over and over again through the course of this chapter, it’s just as important to have breadth to your knowledge as depth.
When you do both of these things you not only nurture your curiosity but open up further possibilities for exploration and creativity. This can be attributed to a phenomenon known as the “Matthew Effect”, or the idea that “the rich get richer while the poor get poorer.”
Initially, the Matthew Effect was used to describe a pattern in the way students learned to read. If a child struggles to learn to read early in their life, they grow to dislike reading. This causes them to read less than their peers who are “stronger” readers, and, as a consequence, they do not gain vocabulary, background knowledge, and information about how reading material is structured. Over time the gap between these two groups of readers widens to the point that the “stronger” readers are almost indistinguishable from the rest, even though the difference when they first started learning the gap was minuscule.
When we take the time to become “great” at something we naturally begin to attract other achievements and opportunities. For example, a student who invests the time to become a really great computer programmer may secure an internship with a local software company. There he may meet someone who becomes his mentor and helps him build an interesting app he had an idea for, which could lead to an invitation to a conference, which could lead to a job opportunity, and so on and so forth. The skills you pick up working on seemingly irrelevant projects can help you develop skills that help you maximize on these opportunities. A blog you started years ago may provide you with the platform you need to market your new app or the skills you learned completing an art project may help you design a logo or create a more aesthetically pleasing website for your business.
At the end of the day, the most important reason to choose a life of curiosity is not to advance your career or get into a better college, but to live a happier and more fulfilled life. As Todd Kashdan, a professor of psychology at George Mason University, says “If you take the fundamental things that people tend to want out of life — strong social relationships and happiness and accomplishing things — all of these are highly linked to curiosity.”
Humans are naturally self-centered; we have to be in order to survive. But, when we indulge in our curiosity we shift our perspective outwards, focusing on the intricate beauty of the world around us. Curiosity helps us cope with the boredom, frustration, and fear of everyday life. It helps us find joy in the mundane, frees us from our selfishness, and helps us see good in the world. I’ll end this chapter with a quote by T.H White from The Once and Future King:
“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlin, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That’s the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting. Learning is the only thing for you, and look what a lot of things there are to learn.”
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