Reasons to keep moving
Curiosity. It’s what stands in the way of sitting still, staying put, being present. We’re compelled to move, to act, to go see. After all, we absorb life through our senses. So what begins to satisfy our curiosity is the smell of dirty cooking oil, stale beer and sweat clinging to our clothes. The sensation of that damp t-shirt clinging to your back in the midnight humidity of the Tropics, or the perpetual sound of mopeds moving through an Indonesian beach town.
I wonder, how many journeys have been taken for a meal? Crossing London for an early hours salt beef bagel on Brick Lane, complete with nosebleed inducing mustard. Or traveling for the slippery rice noodles found in a bowl of steaming hot pho, slurped at a low-slung plastic table in the gutter of a Hanoi side street.
Whether it’s knowing how it feels to paddle out into the lineup at Rincon on a bracing California afternoon, or soaking in the smells and frenetic energy of Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market at 5am on a Saturday, it’s first hand experiences that quench the thirst of curiosity.
And when we act on our curiosities, we find that stillness that bothered us so much in the beginning. It’s found in the journey, the process, the ride. We ride mountains, waves, buses, planes, customs queues, telephone hold music, love. Continually moving from one place to another. A never ending dot-to-dot drawing as we act on our intrigue.
But the real kicker… The more we act on these impulses, the more curious we become. Perpetual motion set in place from something as simple as wondering what it’s like in a far off place.
I wonder, how many journeys have been taken for a meal? Crossing London for an early hours salt beef bagel on Brick Lane, complete with nosebleed inducing mustard. Or traveling for the slippery rice noodles found in a bowl of steaming hot pho, slurped at a low-slung plastic table in the gutter of a Hanoi side street.
Whether it’s knowing how it feels to paddle out into the lineup at Rincon on a bracing California afternoon, or soaking in the smells and frenetic energy of Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market at 5am on a Saturday, it’s first hand experiences that quench the thirst of curiosity.
And when we act on our curiosities, we find that stillness that bothered us so much in the beginning. It’s found in the journey, the process, the ride. We ride mountains, waves, buses, planes, customs queues, telephone hold music, love. Continually moving from one place to another. A never ending dot-to-dot drawing as we act on our intrigue.
But the real kicker… The more we act on these impulses, the more curious we become. Perpetual motion set in place from something as simple as wondering what it’s like in a far off place.