Working is robbing me of my curiosity
“If I were to consider a bad day as the day that ends without experiencing the joy of a new thought or idea, I would say I am in my dark days.”
There is something about a new (refers to new to my mind :)) thought or idea. Do you remember the first time you learned about “free markets” or “socialism” (for some)? or the first time you gained that new perspective about love or a controversial philosophy (for instance, objectivism from Ayn Rand). I remember each one of these moments. Each one of these moments is a notable highlight in my life, up there with graduations or birthday celebrations.
The problem with leading a busy, routine life, though, is that it is very rare to experience that kind of joy of a new thought or a new idea. That moment when you discover a new paradigm of thinking, a new concept, or a new ideology becomes extremely rare, almost like a unicorn. Cryptocurrencies were a recent obsession of mine after reading a great deal about objectivism, but that was a couple of months ago. I miss having such a time.
“School is too busy to think,” I told myself, hoping that once I take on a regular job with normal hours I would be able to use my time off of work to explore new ideas and to formulate new connections within my old thoughts. Now working at a start-up, my work-life balance is not that good, but I still manage to have lots of time. I stand corrected. I was wrong. Having regular work hours didn’t increase the occurrence of these special moments. Work just narrowed my thoughts. I spend more time thinking but it is usually very focused on my specific area. And ideas have not been very useful in my work. I am mostly using or trying to find common practices. Wild ideas are usually experimental and unproven to be beneficial.
The thing about school is that it exposes the learner to new concepts or look at old ones from different points of view. For science-nerds, it’s a big deal that every week you are introduced to at least one new theorem. I recall learning about the Central Limit Theorem and the law of large numbers. These are all mind-bending ideas that exhilarated me for weeks. And, this was introduced in one week of content.
Now with my job, I have only managed to learn specific skills that I get to use repetitively. My conceptual work also revolves around a very specific area or line of thought that I have been on countless times. I think I am doing something wrong. I am yet to find a way to incorporate exploration into my day-to-day responsibilities. Otherwise, work would be a killer of my curiosity.
