Austin Kleon’s newsletter (at some recent point I am quite behind on emails) discussed the importance of wanting to wonder rather than to know
He quotes Mary Ruefle saying:
I think wondering is a way of inhabiting and lingering. There seems to be more dwelling. To dwell, inhabit, and linger. I’m interested in those things. And you can do that when you don’t know
He further quotes her concerns that now that we can just look everything up we wonder a lot less. We are too obsessed with having definitive answers.
I find that I have far too many conversations where people really want to be right. They don’t just want to meander. We rarely say yeah that’s a good point I didn’t think of that. We need more of that.
I like to know. There is that Hermione in me that found validation as a kid by being right and knowing the answer. I also really want the world to make sense. There’s a part of me that thinks that if I just read enough stuff then I will understand. Research is a way of trying to control and organize the world.
I enjoy knowing how to do something far more than fumbling along with no clue. There is something beautiful about deftly laying out a page or making clipping masks. But I didn’t magically learn how to do those things. I had to practice and fail a lot. I had to awkwardly do a bad job a lot of times.
Kleon concludes by saying:
Then again, when you do look things up, you find more things to wonder about
As I learn more about things I enjoy their layers. If I follow my curiosity it can take me to some great places.