The darkness grew ever darker, the smell ever meatier and the fear ever scarier as Leif slowly but gradually tip-toed ever further in to the depths of the blackness that lay before him. The absence of light from all around served only to heighten his trepidation and magnify his curiosity.
And then he saw it.
A round bowl lay in the middle of the kitchen floor, overflowing with chicken and tuna flakes, waiting to be devoured. Leif was a street cat and his curiosity had led him through the open front door of a house he had never explored before. The fact that Leif hadn't eaten for days probably contributed to why the meal looked so good. Leif's curiosity had led him to a very memorable feast. Curiosity hadn't killed the cat but more rather, curiosity had saved the cat.
In Old Norse, Leif means 'lucky' which is ironic given that the most famous Leifs from history don't seem to live very long. The scientist Leif Tronstad was killed by Norwegian Nazi sympathizers, the writer Leif Panduro died when he was only fifty-three and as far as historians can tell, the famed explorer Leif Erikson doesn't appear to have made it out of his forties. Mr Erikson's curiosity however, did lead him to the Americas five-hundred years before Columbus.
We need to embrace curiosity and ask the questions it requires of us. Is grass really green? How do we know? Which stars in the sky are still there and which ones have long since turned to dust? Is Bernie Sanders really unelectable? Why are we told this?
Convention tells us that grass is green and yet in 2012, researchers discovered that the Australian artist Concetta Antico has more receptors in her eyes than the average person and these extra sensors allow her to see more colors. The average person can see about a million different colors. Concetta has access to ninety-nine million. Take a completely green leaf to the average eye and people will just see green. Show it to Concetta and she will often see red or purple or various other colours around the edges.
If aliens right now are looking at us through a powerful telescope sixty-five million light-years away, they will actually be viewing the dinosaurs. And what of Bernie Sanders? He's also a dinosaur who is unelectable because people won't vote for him right? That's what Americans are told by both the right and left in politics. And yet most Americans aren't that bothered with politics and of those who are, only a few take a passing interest. The reality is that before he threw his hat in the ring to be president, most Americans had barely heard of Bernie Sanders. So the idea that people wouldn't vote for somebody they had previously never heard of is really rather daft. The public hasn't had time to fall out with him yet so ask yourselves why are the public told he is unelectable?
Be curious. Ask not only how things are the way they are but why? If a child asks how an apple falls from the tree, we tell them it is gravitational forces pulling it to the floor. This is great but we should encourage them to ask why this is so and then you can tell them it's because scientists have worked out that it's because the mass of the planet is greater than the mass of an apple. Unless it's one of those Japanese Hokuto apples, then I think it must be touch and go. Man they can get so big, seriously Google it if you haven't heard of them.
I'm not saying don't believe anything anybody says. Far from it. There are many reliable sources of information in life. All I'm saying is be curious and filter the gold from the gravel.
Question everything folks!