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Surprise

Logically, if we follow Information Theory in asserting that the information value of a given statement or behavior is proportional to to its unexpectedness, we (me, to be clear, but We sounds so much better) might directly that surprise is the most important path or engine of learning.

If nothing in your life is unexpected, you learn nothing.

Curiosity, in turn, might reasonably be summarized as a taste for and pleasure in surprise. “Oh, I didn’t know that. How fascinating!!”

The alternative, of course, and a distressingly common one, is a virtual mania with maintaining the sense that one knows most everything worth knowing. This is usually accompanied by an obsessive need to cram the unexpected into any available box of the expected. To killing surprise. To throttling it in the crib, if it can be born at all.

Einstein–who was certainly in the camp of the curious–invoked this line of thought when he opined that “There are two ways to live life. One is as if nothing is a miracle. The other is as if everything is.”

I feel I slightly misquoted him, but that was close.

This means that true openness means you have NO IDEA what is about to happen, because you allowing it, and you are allowing it because you like and profit from surprises.

I sometimes wish I were more disciplined, but I have so much fun, and see so much, going I know not where, and doing I know not what.