The Joy (and Chaos) of Being Curious

Photo by Buddha Elemental 3D on Unsplash

Olivia Gabel | News Editor

I have never been particularly good at not knowing. 

Not in the way you might be imagining, anyway. I wasn’t the kid constantly raising questions, begging for answers to even the quietest pieces of life. Why is the sky blue? Why does a week have seven days? Why do dogs have tails? No. My thirst for knowledge was sheltered in my head, where the questions quickly multiplied. 

Internally, I wanted to know why things worked. Why people did what they did. What happens next. What happened before. Would this happen to me? I carried my questions the way kids my age did backpacks. 

At a certain point, though, the questions became something more complex. 

They became physical. It was no longer just frustrating to ask to no avail; no, it hurt. It was a weight on my chest, a heavy, crushing uncertainty. 

I remember that feeling, especially during COVID. 

The questions came faster than experts and their science was able to answer them. When can I go back to school? When can I see my friends again? Am I allowed to hug my grandma? Every answer to an inquiry only brought about three more. I don’t think I realized it then, but uncertainty became something I carried in my body. 

For years, I thought my discomfort with the unknown was something I needed to fix, something pathological.

Then I found journalism. 

When I first started studying journalism, I thought the job was writing. It turns out writing is the easy part. The real work is asking questions and being willing to sit with the answers, even when they’re complicated. 

My freshman year at UD, the university announced layoffs that affected faculty across campus. Two of my favorite professors lost their teaching positions and were moved into different roles.

Most people seemed satisfied with the budget-centered explanations. 

I wasn’t.

I wanted to know what that actually meant. What circumstances had led to that decision? What was happening behind the scenes? How could two educators who had such a profound impact on students no longer be doing the work they loved?

That story became one of my first major reporting projects, and somewhere in the process, I realized journalism could do something my anxiety never could: answer questions.

Instead of inventing endless questions with possibly arbitrary answers, I could go discover them.

For the first time, my brain was starting to make sense to me. 

And even beyond journalism, I love asking and answering questions. I’m always looking for a way to scratching my itch. Museums are a great time, as every exhibit begins with a question. Even when strolling through St. Joes–or any other building–I read nearly every informational flyer I pass, including the overflowing library corkboards, because I can’t stand not knowing what they say. I Google everything. I want to know the people I meet’s top Spotify artist. I want to know your favorite book, and then I want to know why it’s your favorite. I’ll try to guess your zodiac sign before you tell me. Not because I think the future is written in the stars, but because I find people and their unknowns endlessly fascinating.

Everyone is constantly revealing little pieces of themselves.

The way they tell a story. The books they carry. The music they recommend. The details they choose to mention and even the ones they leave out.

Maybe that’s what curiosity really is. Not a desire for information, but a desire for understanding.

Journalism has taught me that the most interesting answers are rarely the first ones. Sometimes the truth is hidden beneath layers of assumptions, rumors, headlines or half-finished explanations. Sometimes you have to ask one more question. Then another. And if it requires it, a dozen more after that.

And sometimes, if you’re lucky, someone trusts you enough to tell you something they’ve never told before.

I still don’t like uncertainty very much.

I still catch myself wanting immediate answers. I still find myself wondering about conversations long after they’ve ended. I still have moments when not knowing feels uncomfortable.

But I’ve stopped seeing that discomfort as something that needs to be conquered.

The older I get, the more I think curiosity isn’t about eliminating uncertainty at all. It’s about learning to live with it long enough to discover something worthwhile.

These days, my notes app is full of story ideas, observations, lists and questions that only make sense to me. Some of them become articles. Most of them don’t.

But I keep collecting them anyway; I likely always will. 

After all, every story starts the same way: someone wondering.

And I’ve always been good at that.