CAREER AND CURIOSITY

By Allen Olatunde

Curiosity is common to human beings at all ages from infancy through adulthood, and is easy to observe in many other animal species. These include apes, cats, and rodents. Everyone has curiosity but the level defers. Without curiosity, we will not be able to learn. However, it can still be misused. Career is sustained by the level of curiosity of a student. We see a doctor in the hospital and we sometimes want to touch the stethoscope because we want to know it through sense of touch. Our parents fight us because we do not take permission before we operate, press or handle a gadget in the house. If you are curious to be a lawyer, it is good if it leads you to read, study and get prepared systematically but if it leads you to only admire the gown and wig without any academic effort, it is a waste of interest. As a student, you must know and control your curiosity on everything.

WHAT IS CURIOSITY?
Curiosity can be seen in different ways. Let's learn together. Curiosity is a healthy desire to know or learn more or faster than expected. It is also a desire to know about people or things that do not concern one; nosiness. It is an object that arouses interest, as by being innovative or extraordinary. It is the brother of impatience and complacency. The act and art of tempting or testing what is forbidden or disallowed without much detail. Curiosity is being forward as the result of inner push. It is the additional step of knowing or doing something ahead of others. Curiosity (from Latin curiosus means "careful, diligent, curious," similar to cura "care") is a quality related to inquisitive thinking such as exploration, investigation, and learning, evident by observation in human and many animal species. The term can also be used to denote the behavior itself being caused by the emotion of curiosity. As this emotion represents a thirst for knowledge, curiosity is a major driving force behind scientific research and other disciplines of human study.


CURIOSITY CAN BE BAD AND GOOD
A man's curiosity is not a bad thing in itself but it can lead to much wasted time and even a wasted life if one does not govern and direct it and each one will answer before God for time wasted in idle curiosity. It is very easy to become over-curious in the bad sense. That is, to spend more time watching or doing the mundane actions, or always seeking the latest gossip or scandal, rather than applying oneself seriously to reading, studying, teaching and participating in progressive act towards the career.

WHEN CURIOSITY IS BAD
INDISCRETION - Curiosity is bad first, when it is indiscreet. Indiscretion (carelessness), a fault that is committed above all with the eyes, can be likened to stealing the goods of others. It is indiscreet to read the letters/SMS of other persons without permission, to look at somebody's paper during examination, etc. A mother instructs her son not to pry into her bag. It would also be indiscretion to listen to the phone conversations of others, or in our technical age, to open e-mails or enter the private computer files of others. If you are doing these acts, stop it today.

SCANDALS - Curiosity is bad, second, when it is scandalous. It is scandalous when one looks at what is indecent, be it in movies or in photographs, books, magazines, phones and so on. Looking at such things is morally sinful. All these will block your heart and brain from seeking what is needful for your career.

INFORMAL ATTEMPT - Curiosity is bad, third, when it suggests attempting sex before marriage, wanting to romance opposite sex to calm the sex move. Cohabitation is out of curiosity to be a family person before the time. Love romances are also dangerous traps by which the Devil snatches uprightness and purity of customs from lives, especially girls. Your career is bigger than all these social vices. Any wrong attempt will strangle your dream career to a sudden and unprepared full house wife, or jobless man with liabilities. You can control your curiosity so that your dream career will have its date on the glorious day.

READING OF ANYTHING - Curiosity is bad, fourth, when a purpose is not known in reading any book or information on the net. Quest for information should be guided and controlled. Too much of knowledge makes a man goes extreme against his/her faith and values. Education is good but education does not produce wrong ideas. Education has produced ideas that gave us good roads, refineries, technology, modern farming, etc. Reading of anything will deform your ability of building career. Beware!

LATEST INTOXICATION - Fashion trends will never cease. As much as we live, latest dress and dressing will keep thrilling the eyes. Anyone who cannot control his/her curiosity to know and have all, will end up being trapped, indebted, valueless, and wasteful. Love for latest phones is curiosity to steal, borrow, attempt unlawful acts, etc. Those who top career from the universities to polytechnics are not intoxicated and unsatisfied ones. From my research, the modest, calm, contented and godly students win the best student awards every year in our tertiary institutions. Do not be anxious to get all these things now. When you get the license to your career, all of them will come to you with ease. Give one for one.

OCCULTISM – Wanting to know the mystery of this world, requires knowing the dark side of the world. In the Bible, Eve desired to know more and she accepted counsel of Satan. Truly, there is power in this world. Curiosity can prompt one to join witches, sorcerers, and fraternities in order to have influential words, power, and affluence and influence to show the world. How many cult members actually get to the top of their career? I was once in a tertiary institution where the cult big boss gave me open license to join them without being beaten as their rituals. Because I know where I am going, I refused the offer. When you get admission, people around you will share the good of such societal groups with you so that you can belong. As soon as you accept the offer, you have accepted to set your career ablaze mercilessly. Your dream career is bigger than short time influence, only within the school campus. You are destined to rule your world without weapons of war but with success and impact of your career. Think twice. Curiosity in the campus must not push you to such group. They are life-wasters.
DOING THE FORBIDDEN – In African culture, there are a lot of “don'ts” with consequences. I grew up to know some. I think they are African philosophical way of protecting lives from danger. But a curious person will attempt to see whether the consequence is real or not. Many had died because of that. If they escape the consequence, they move to do more and the sleeping dog of calamity is watching to strive at the tail time of life. This abomination is also forbidden by the Bible. Such forbidden acts are incest, tattoo, lesbianism, gay, street-fighting, cohabitation, act of disrespect, etc. In year 2000, a student fought his landlord publicly in my school. The act was dishonouring. Everyone could not stop the student because he thought he had physical strength. At the end, the old man showed him what is stronger than bone. He cast a spell on him and suddenly the student lost his consciousness and became imbecile. It was said that the student will continue to be an imbecile every date of that incident in every year, though he was healed. The fight actually led to riot that caused the school to be closed for a while. It is appropriate for a student to know his/her boundary. Don't attempt anything that can destroy your future and the career.

WHEN CURIOSITY IS GOOD
WANT TO BE INFORMED - Curiosity is good and praiseworthy, first, when it is natural, being a free, discreet expansion of the reasonable desire to know the persons and things that surround a man. You admire a journalist every time you watch news on TV. It will be good to strive to meet one-on-one or call the person for advice, counsel or materials that will aid your pursuit into the same career.

FOR SCIENTIFIC INVENTION - Second, when it is scientific, guided by prudence and Godly teaching, and animated by the noble desire to penetrate the mysteries of beings and things, of studying the causes and laws that govern them with the aim of successfully interpreting the nature into things that will benefit human race e.g. discovery of medicine that cures diseases like ebola, HIV/AIDS; waste recycling; communication advancement; crime detector, etc. Invention requires curiosity. A good and praiseworthy curiosity was found in Andre Ampère who made great contributions to mathematics and chemistry; Alessandro Volta, inventor of the voltaic battery; Louis Pasteur, famous for his breakthroughs in microbiology, and other great learned men of science who were, at the same time, men of faith. Clearly, scientific curiosity is the condition for discoveries. Every science student supposes to be curious of new discovery during JETS Club in the school.

PROFESSIONAL DUTIES – A police officer or detective will be curious to gather information that will resolve a matter. Such curiosity is timed and useful to save the innocent and punish the offender. A journalist will be curious on a story that will get the public informed. Auditor and accountant will be curious on “why an account is not balanced”. Develop a good curiosity towards your career as from today. For curiosity can occupy all your time.

WANTING TO KNOW GOD - Having dissatisfaction with mediocre Christian living. It is the hunger to grow from babe to adult. Paul was once a child, but now adult (I Cor. 13:11; Phil 3:10; Dan. 11:32; Isa. 40:31). We grow to know God out of healthy curiosity.

HOW TO CONTROL 'CURIOSITY' FOR
A HEALTHY LIVING AND CAREER

1.    Overcome greediness. Always be content with yourself and what you can afford
2.    Exchange worry for trust in God – what you cannot do, drop it for God. Trying to do it is equal to time wasting.
3.    Avoid the irrelevant for needful things towards your career
4.    Think before you leap. If you do not, you may have wound that may disqualify you at the top. Seek advice when your inner push is uncontrolled.
5.    Plan for your needs, not wants. Life that is full of junks will not last. Go for real materials that will boast your zeal toward your career.
6.    Do not be too ambitious. You want to be a doctor. It is good, nevertheless, life still has its course to follow. Don't be too rigid on career. Give chance for reasonable flexibility.
7.    Be fully satisfied per time.
8.    Desire to know God first .
9.    Firstly, know why you want to know. Set target for every curiosity in order to avoid extreme acts.
10.    Do not attempt to test what is not ripe. Avoid curiosity on sex. You have 99% failure rate of falling victim of pregnancy, early motherhood or fatherhood, promiscuity, shattered mind, guilt, sexual transmitted diseases, etc.
11.    Be engaged meaningfully, for idleness engages mind for bad curiosity.
12.    Let the future be for future and now for now. You want to be a nurse. You still have four to five years to train. Wait and follow due process of career.
13.    Be addicted to God's word and be prayerful. This will save you from ungodly curiosity.

Career with good desire to know more has tendency to rule the world.

Allen Olatunde
The Career Blogger