Curiosity

A CHARACTERISTIC common to humankind is a compelling curiosity, for which we may well be grateful. Of course, like all other attributes, curiosity may become excessive or perverted. But a wholesome curiosity moves us to learning and impels us to progress. Indeed, when eagerness for learning leaves, it is evidence of a lagging interest in life. Curiosity is especially acute in children and may become exasperating to puzzled parents because there are some questions which we may not be prepared to satisfy with readily available answers. Indeed, there are some questions for which we have no readily available answers to satisfy even those who hold themselves to be much wiser than children. And often even the answers we know to be true are exceedingly difficult to tell in terms of childhood understanding. If too many of the vital questions of children remain unsatisfied, we may leave them without solid sustenance. But if our answers are beyond their years and beyond their preparedness to receive them, we may also do much damage. We do not feed coarse fare to tender foals. But with faith and conviction, trusting to motherly instinct and paternal good sense, we must always earnestly endeavor to satisfy the wholesome hunger for knowledge. And children and youth, for their part, must learn to accept some things on the word and wisdom of their parents, until more knowledge, more light, more maturity, more truth shall confirm the facts_even as we, all of us, as children of God, our Father in heaven, learn to accept some partial answers with the promise of repletion to come. We must learn to live with this compelling curiosity of youth, and lead them step by step_not faster than their years, nor yet so slowly that they will seek satisfaction elsewhere. Thank God for the great gift of a wholesome curiosity and for the promise of an ever-unfolding eternal truth which will one day bring to all of us the answers we so much seek.