A Case for Curiosity

Questioning the Road to Burnout and Questioning Some More

Here’s looking at another unsolicited amble along the contours of my inner workings. You see, I am in a bit of a funny spot in life. Luxuriously, anxiously, I find myself sans employment, avec plenty of time on my hands and the blessed stability of financial savings and support for the next while. Other than dabbling in Duolingo (je ne suis pas une souris), adjusting to a new land, and trying to be funny and impressive for my family and friends through writing such as this, I have been spending large portions of my days wondering if there is something that I am missing here.

This is a similar feeling to the amygdala scramble that happens when I am spinning out a bit, so I am never sure if that “something” even exists or if it is just a shadowy trick of the light. Either way, it has me keeping secrets for reasons that I don’t quite know: out of shame? Out of fear? Out of the perception that being lowkey about my current day-to-day is a courteous nod to being in a position of huge privilege? Probably yes and yes and yes and etcetera.

In the spirit of honesty that I am finally leaning into (may as well), I would share the secrets that I am keeping, but I am not quite sure what they are yet. In the meantime, I will describe some of the cover-ups with the hope that maybe these are clues. For starters, when asked, I often pretend that I have been earnestly looking for a job, and while I will start doing so when my new study permit allows, I have not begun the search yet and am not all that worried about rushing into it.

Next, when asked what type of work I am looking for, I wave my hands and vaguely refer to roles that would require me to wear scrubs or corporate-girly coats and make me look either traditionally virtuous or like a Responsible Practical Adult. This, instead of being honest about the fact that so far, I have considered becoming either a puppy-yoga instructor (intriguingly possible in Vancouver) or a very-part-time barista at a groovy little coffee shop up the road. This would allow me to have fun, earn, and dedicate time to creativity, simple as.

Adding cherries on top all over the place, I also make the activities that I am filling my days with sound a lot more traditionally meaningful and productive than I think they are considered (by Western culture) to be. I let people think that the flexible learning course that I am completing is more demanding than it is. I make it sound like I am buying fewer cappuccinos than I am because I am responsible with my money, and so on, building my defence force, building my case.

Further, when I don’t quite manage to deploy those troops, I am still very cloak and dagger about the reality that – a lot of the time, at least, and putting other troubles aside – I am tentatively LOVING it. So, to really squeeze all the possible juice from the mixed metaphors, I find myself wondering, what am I defending against? What am I fighting? Who or what am I hiding (myself) from?

There are a few almost-answers with which I can play around. At the risk of stating what has come to be an over-cited driver for this type of behaviour, I wonder if the supposed enemy is my only feeling worthy as a human because of what I do – urgently, well (perfectly), at scale and at speed – not because of who I am: valuable as is. Commonly cited for a reason, that is a painful epidemic of feeling, ranging from dull background aches to acute, searing slices, so I can understand why I and many others would want to at least allow ourselves the illusion of escape on our hustle-culture treadmills that go nowhere fast.

Similarly, I also wonder if it could just be that I am full to the brim with societal messaging about finding my purpose, working to deserve pleasure, making the most of every present moment because life is short, over-intellectualising, optimising, looking good while doing so and keeping up with how the metrics of these pursuits change by the second. Perhaps it has something to do with the schooling system, with capitalism, with politicised virtue, with attachment styles (apparently probably definitely pretty much always something to do with attachment styles), blah blah blah, the not-all-bad-but-not-always-useful usuals.

These ping off my battered brain walls like Bludgers in a magical-thinking Quidditch match, having me thinking that if I just think hard enough, I could rouse the sensical energy to toe the thinky-culture line once more, to earn… whatever it is I think I’m supposed to earn?

Even writing these last few paragraphs has felt like wading through a muddy marsh while dodging overgrown thorn bushes, STILL not managing either to identify or escape the elusive enemy, or to capture the missing answer flag that could make this all make sense. Explanations like the ones mentioned have been turned over in my mind’s palm so intensively that they now feel like an eyeroll, like frustration and old news, like stones that I am so bored of looking at, I have to collage them with all sorts of weird messy mixed metaphors to make them a little more colourful.

With this in mind, I wonder if writing about it is in itself an effort to make the pursuit of an answer still-interesting-enough to continue with, distracting me from far graver issues and far more nourishing joys, and keeping me going in self-absorbed circles rather than living life! Perhaps, then, it’s about diversion and control because certain mechanisms in the world rely on people’s fear and want, diminishment and ignorance. Perhaps I am too paranoid, suspicious, cynical. Perhaps it’s easier to collage it with metaphors than to look at it directly. Perhaps it’s not that deep.

Whatever “it” is, what I do know is that there were times when I was so feverishly committed to the sickly-yellow brick road to burnout – starting and staying in ill-suited jobs for too long, working to achieve miracles in academia, healing furiously, perfecting relationship roles, serving without discretion – that I yearned for empty days. I was even willing to be unhappy and unwell for them, rose-tinting memories of a bed in a clinic where I could rest and be fed and numbed – “anything but this” – all the while knowing that people in those beds were likely to be longing for the ability to have days that looked like mine at the time.

It felt like an amorphous sort of Catch-22. Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. And the worst part was that I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to be in an alternative, more equanimous position, or that it was even possible or allowed. It was a paradoxical, suffocating, desperate mind fuck, the tail ends of which still wisp through me. Along with ensuring that I don’t fully own or trust it or let myself be at peace when I am experiencing, well, peace, these tail ends – and what I have watched many people around me go through, too – spark investigations like this one.

From choosing to research Burnout for my dissertation, to spending hours discussing various refractions of it with a therapist who specialises in Burnout recovery, to earnestly, annoyingly, stereotypically evangelising about creativity and enough-ness and the slow life with friends and family, my attention has repeatedly been drawn to this spiderweb of a topic. In my webby quests, the closest I have come to identifying body-corroborated truths has generally been when leaning into not knowing, into questioning. Mostly, these questions have been various iterations of: surely there is another way?

I think that for now, maybe forever, approaching the world through questioning is as counter-cultural a way of life as I can fathom or manage. I think that I need to float in this life raft of inquisitiveness so as not to get swept away in the currents of ignorant, frightened, white-knuckling productivity. All I can see from that way is that I would either drown or find land later on and have to renew my approach then.

Like any good, death-fearing, existential angsty youth, I would rather hang out in the lifeboat of questioning now, fishing for food and desalinating water, open to the possibility of being taken to an abundant shore, and opening to the possibility that maybe the meaning of life really is just to be here, simple as, with the sea and the raft and the abundant shore already within me. However, a blessed and essential difference between this way and the mind fuck distractions of a few paragraphs, months, years ago, is that curiosity and wonder are doing the questioning now, not insatiability and neurosis.

Okay, still a little bit of insatiability and neurosis.

The best part is that I know that I am nowhere near being the pioneer of this. Much ancient wisdom explores these questions (questions!) and plays (plays!) with the paradox of accepting what is – groundlessness – at the same time as grounding into the earth and cultivating new ways of meaning through nature, service, work, movement, love, Beginner’s Mind, Ikigai and so on. Even looking at the trends of today and their links to these ancient ways makes me feel hopeful. People all over are emphasizing the importance of glimmers and delicious moments, nature-bathing, slow-living and creativity, gratitude, ambition, connection, awe, mindfulness, prayer, pleasure, and joy.

Whether it’s the new or the old or the new-old concepts, I have noticed that people across generations are embracing them and questioning with curiosity and wonder, or at least poking at them with tentative intrigue. This feels like a beautiful combination of innovative revolution and a respectful return to basics, the complexity of which makes sense to me in this complex world. While I know that many people will not be able to relate to my current day-to-day for various reasons, I do have a hunch that I am not the only one who is looking for or open to new postures with which to carry ourselves through the days, however they may look. Inquisitively, we may as well.

For me, this feels like a much healthier director and driver for ambition and hard work. If my compass is curiosity, I hope that I am more able to invest in jobs and other pursuits with integrity, keeping a loving check on where I may be overdoing it and what may need more of my attention, course-correcting when necessary and with far less fear and shame. Because of course I know that working is necessary and can even be lovely; I am excited to splash around in there, whether I end up deep-end diving or tiptoeing in the shallows.

And I know that many have had to be in the waters of work for years by now or are urgently entering and getting chucked around by the waves a bit. So, even to these people, I say let’s do so, whatever the iteration, with small delights and curious moments, with strong, relaxed backs and opening, opening, open fronts.

I know it’s against the grain, but the facts of our days don’t even have to change all that much and we don’t even have to tell anyone. With curiosity, with neurosis, with love, let’s lightly muddle out some answers to find what feels missing. Or even better, let’s ask more questions. Surely, surely, this is another way. With less shame, with less fear, with less fatigue, surely there are other ways.