The case for being curious

There are two types of people in the world. Those who delete a document, unopened, when they realise it was sent to them by mistake. And those who open it first, before deleting it. I know which group I belong to. I also know which group I tell people I do. 

Recently, on a large WhatsApp group I’m on, somebody made a mistake that could happen to any of us. Several private documents found their way onto the group. Within moments the sender realised, apologised profusely, and deleted them and everyone agreed to move on. 

Crisis averted. 

Except it left me wondering about the people. Some admitted they’d opened the attachments. Others proudly declared they hadn’t. They’d seen they weren’t intended for them and had simply ignored them. 

I want to believe those people exist. I also want to believe everyone washes behind their ears, flosses every evening, and has actually read the terms and conditions before clicking “I agree”. 

The truth is that curiosity is one of humanity’s greatest design features. We’re a species that slows down to look at car accidents. We watch people arguing in Woolworths as though we’ve accidentally wandered into live theatre. If somebody whispers, “Don’t look now”, every fibre of our being immediately wants to look now. 

We’re not nosy. We’re conducting research. 

There’s a reason the saying “Curiosity killed the cat” has survived for centuries. Although most people forget the second half, “but satisfaction brought it back”. Curiosity isn’t the problem. It’s one of the reasons we’ve survived as a species. 

It persuaded Christopher Columbus that there might be something beyond the horizon. It sent Ferdinand Magellan’s expedition around the world. It drove Ernest Shackleton to Antarctica and Sir Edmund Hillary up Everest. It inspired scientists to ask impossible questions and engineers to build rockets capable of leaving earth. It even convinced seven astronauts to climb aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger, because exploring the unknown has always involved extraordinary courage as well as extraordinary risk. 

If nobody had ever been curious, we’d still believe the world ended at the edge of the map. 

It’s why children ask “Why?” every 23 seconds. It’s why journalists have jobs. It’s why detectives solve crimes. It’s why scientists discover things nobody knew yesterday. And, it’s why Jews have built an entire culture around asking questions rather than simply accepting answers. 

It’s why we read the comments before the article. Why we slow down when we pass a house with police cars outside. Why the phrase “I’ve got something to tell you” can derail an entire afternoon. 

Admittedly, not every question advances civilisation. 

The WhatsApp incident simply exposed that there are really three kinds of people. Those who didn’t open the documents. Those who did. And those who opened them and now insist they didn’t. 

Of course, there is a line. Reading something obviously shared in error isn’t something to celebrate, and respecting another person’s privacy matters. 

But if you’ve ever accidentally overheard a conversation in a restaurant, noticed an intriguing email subject line on someone else’s laptop, or glanced just a fraction too long at the shopping basket of the person in front of you at Checkers, then welcome. You’re human. We’re endlessly fascinated by what we don’t yet know. The only difference is that some of us are curious enough to admit it.