Day 110: Stay Curious, My Friend

When I was a kid I used to tinker a lot more than I do now. I remember that I would take apart our old phones and try to learn how they worked – just so I could, of course, figure out how it could be turned into a keypad for a bomb (a pretend bomb for the government peeps monitoring every one of our words). I remember another time trying to learn how staplers worked and I ended up putting one right through my pointer finger.

I received a message on LinkedIn the other day from someone I know. He was someone that I worked with and he shared some really kind words about the work I'm doing at Highland and it reminded me of those childhood days. He wrote,

...You have a bright future ahead of you. You have a natural ability to lead clients that many do not possess. You have a high sense of curiosity too which ultimately makes you great. Stay curious my friend. 

"Stay curious." If I had a mantra as a child or really cared to have one today, that would be it. I appreciate the comment not because it may or may not be true, but because it's a wake-up call for this soon-to-be 33-year old man to be that boy, that curious boy who was willing to turn phones into bombs and staple his finger just to learn.

Curiosity is learning without pretentiousness.

Curiosity is chasing down knowledge not to be a know-it-all but to truly understand.

Curiosity is asking all the questions, the obvious ones where you may be perceived as stupid by the listener and the hidden ones where you're perceived as a genius (and seem only to come after asking the obvious ones).

Did curiosity kill the cat? Maybe. But what I do know is that curiosity took man to the moon.

Stay curious, my friend.