Thursday, July 17, 2008

Curiosity...What's That?

Today I was in a doctor's office examining room with my fifteen-year-old son. This was a dermatologist office so the chair in the examining room was most interesting. Every time that we go to this particular office, my son is overcome with an insatiable desire to play with all of the buttons on the chair to see how it works. It is as though he regresses back to age four when we enter the room and I always remind him that we lowly mortals are not allowed to touch buttons in doctor's offices...ever. Curiosity is a strange thing. For some it is a mildly passing notion that may or may not need to be embraced. For others, like me, it can be maddening and all-consuming, like an itch in the middle of your back that you will go to any length to scratch. My son is actually just like me. When I have the opportunity to go to Biltmore House in North Carolina, I am not nearly as interested in the hundreds of rooms I am allowed to walk through as I am the locked doors I cannot open and the dark, shadowy corridors that are roped off. I can't stand it!! I must know what is behind those doors and in those closets, and down those hallways! I have even asked employees there to just tell me what is lurking in the unseen places and they look at me as if lobsters were crawling out of my ears.
Why are some so very curious and why is curiousity said to kill the proverbial cat? And what of the first man and woman? Perhaps she was driven by the need to have what the serpent promised her- good eats and great wisdom. Had I been in her place, I would have had to fight off curiosity like a swarm of bees. I like to think that only the lure of great wisdom would have drawn me to disobedience, but I am simple and shallow and why deny it? I would have wanted to see what was behind door number three no matter how many other doors were opened to me. It is not that I want what I cannot have, I just want to see everything. But seeing everything is really not my job, it is God's job and sometimes I just need to be reminded of that. He has every right to choose for me...because I am His.

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