You are standing on the shores of the cosmos, where galaxies spin like celestial dancers, and the universe’s secrets signal you to uncover their mysteries.
You are not alone, Newton and Albert Einstein are your best friends, and they are helping you to unravel the grand tapestry of existence and all the hidden secrets that were never discovered before, from the biggest stars in our galaxy to the tiniest atoms in the quantum world.
– What questions should we answer first? You ask them,
– I can’t answer any question now, reply to Albert with a fixed look into his eyes.
– Newton said this is not the right moment to answer questions; we must observe first and think later, so we must stay quiet.
You couldn’t stay quiet; there were so many questions to answer; what to look for? How to understand the universe? What equation can we discover? How to prove them?
Those were the questions that your mind was asking solely for, immediately meanwhile Newton and Albert are looking; you turn on the phone and open Twitter, you scroll and scroll for a few minutes and switch between other apps several times; now you are not observing; you stopped being curious, or at least about the universe, and suddenly you wake up from your dream.
This dream felt so real, you pondered, sitting in your bed; what if I need to stay quiet, learn to observe and think, for I can understand and know how to answer any question I might have? You asked, looking at your room with a low tone of voice.
Stolen Focus
You know it is harder to stay curious now than before (see Stolen Focus), or at least that is what you feel; there are so many distractions that do not allow you to see the apples falling, the space that is not empty, the galaxy that is not the only one.
There are so many things to do, so many people to listen to, much news to digest, and many messages to answer; nowadays, you understand it is hard to stay quiet and do just nothing, even for a few minutes.
But if curiosity drives understanding, what is curiosity, or what is understanding? Let’s define these two worlds first:
- Curiosity: A strong desire to know or learn something.
- Understanding: The ability to understand something.
If we join the definition of these two words, the result will have one of the most powerful sentences in the world, but also in the present one.
Knowing the meaning of these two words was the reason Greek developed a numerical system (see Greek Numeral); Plato understood the immense importance of objects (see Platonic Solids).
Indians adopted the value of zero (see History of Zero), Euclid wrote The Elements (see Euclid’s Elements), Newton wrote The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy (see Principia), Einstein created the powerful laws of gravity, science was developed and in general industrialization and technology were possible, and so on and so on.
You might disagree with me if you think we can understand without curiosity, but the sturdy question to ask should be, does understanding exist without curiosity?
On the other side, you can be curious and not understand certain things, which is fine; the importance of the subject is that you never stop looking for answers.
You also must know that you might never get the answer you are asking or not all of them. You may need more time to finish your research; Einstein could not answer all the quantum questions either, but you need to learn how to use the knowledge humans have already created.
If you are inquisitive with nature, ideas will never stop, questions will pile somehow in the corner of a napkin or just a piece of white paper, and you will never stop looking.
But why is it important to never stop looking for answers? Because when you look deeply and silently enough, you will find that we are governed by behaviors that create fractal patterns in our nature; these patterns repeat over time, scaling in and out, and when you look closer and constantly with just a bit of pure curiosity is when discoveries occur, because you can disentangle the understanding of those patterns.
Of course, you need to understand dimensionally new concepts and new ideas. Also, it would help if you learned to think quietly, but that’s one of the prices to pay to understand a black hole, thermodynamic laws, binary numbers, the air, the sun, the stars, water, or a simple flower.
The other price to pay is a painful process of repeated and strangulated questioning with just a few answers.
Proper understanding is only possible with pure curiosity and corrects practical knowledge of the right foundations; you need to learn the fundamental laws that were already discovered so you can use them where history will never repeat itself, in those places where old tools or knowledge has been sufficient to rediscover and reinvent new ideas that answer actual incomplete challenges that nature had presented.
Without fear of being wrong, I can tell you that the first foundational concepts you need, and we all need to understand, are enclosed within mathematics and physics.
I have been writing about why fundamentals are important here (see this sensei story link); learning the fundamental laws of nature to spark any understanding process will be one of your best times well spent.
Laws and fundamental principles are one of the best tools to use when looking for answers, but still, I know most people will never review them, not even once a year, and most do not even know what principles or laws to look for.
Sciences Principles
Mathematics and physics are substantial topics; we have more than 2000 years of discoveries, research, and knowledge. However, your best tools are genuine wisdom and answering real and deep questions (see The Principles of Mathematics).
If you do not like mathematics or physics, I have a simple but effective hack for you. Use the first principles instead.
It would be best to have many tools to unlock understanding and gain knowledge; I mentioned earlier how mathematics and physics should be your first stop.
But suppose you understand the first principles and you memorize them. In that case, you will have a powerful tool that, with no hesitation, will teach you how to disentangle the world’s biggest mysteries and how to behave in harmony with the immense wave of laws and principles that already exist. (See First Principles Book and First Principles)
You have no finite set of alternatives to get some wisdom and acquire knowledge; I’m sharing in this letter a deep opinion of the importance of understanding, but unfortunately, I cannot show you how to be curious and search for answers. I honestly think no one really can.
Curiosity is the inexplicable feeling that some people naturally have, and others don’t.
Because in today’s society, it is hard for most of us to remain silent, to listen to the voices inside of us, and not to look at the phone screen when there is no need to do so.
The universe is an endless puzzle, the life is an incredible journey where everything is interconnected; there are lots of things that have not been discovered yet, those answers remain hidden, and only those people armed with a burning desire to understand will remain in the edge of the past, in the sound of the present and the light of the future.