Curiosity and happiness

On navigating the undulating road to fulfilment

Wait! Just Listen is a weekly Sunday newsletter on living a purposeful and meaningful life, in a digitised world of opinion polarisation, gratuitous commentary and click-bait.

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By Cayman Art

As a child, when faced with particularly challenging situations or more specifically predicaments that played on my rather sensitive disposition, I’d focus on random things and sights around me; rays of gleaming sunlight peaking through a casuarina tree casting irregular shadows on the dining table, glistening drops of dew on the windscreens of cars parked on the street across, the starched crease lines on ironed laundry. I would draw solace from these silent, placid beings, from their harmless, non-fluctuating colour and intention.

I realised at a very young age that there was a certain granular tenderness in being curious of things and phenomena around us. This sense of curiosity was the invisible shield that kept me sane. An indefinable nothingness that is necessary. But every time, there. Always. Inevitable. Urgent.