Fifty-Fifty Curious

Some adventures need a plan. Some only need trust. And sometimes curiosity is simply waiting to see what happens next.

If I had a lot of money, I think I would only travel.

There are so many places I would like to discover, especially other cultures. Friends are preparing for a safari in Tanzania and then a few days in Zanzibar. Another friend went to Bali. I saw Vietnam on television recently and the beaches looked fantastic. A colleague is spending three weeks in Argentina. Peru could also be interesting.

The problem is that when I think about one place, another one immediately appears.

Next year, if we make a big journey, I would like it to be the trip of my life. I just do not know yet where that trip should be. Probably not a cruise. Friends have asked us to go on one with them, but I am not convinced. I imagine it being noisy, with many people together, and I remember seeing stories about illness spreading on cruise ships.

Perhaps I prefer the idea of discovering something with a little more space around me.

Of course, there is one small problem with my plan to travel everywhere: I do not play the lottery. So I cannot win.

And France itself is full of places I still do not know. Sometimes I see somewhere on television and think, wow, this is in my own country? We have so many castles, for example. I have visited some, including Versailles, but there are still many places to discover.

Maybe curiosity does not always require travelling very far.

Curious, but with conditions.

When I try something new, how I feel depends very much on what it is.

If it is something I have planned for a long time, I am excited. I want to know what it will be like, and mentally I am already prepared for it. If it is unexpected, I can be more careful. There can be some stress because I do not know what I will meet, what I will see or how I will react.

I am also not curious about everything simply because it is new.

Painting, for example, is not really something that interests me. Mosaic is not especially my hobby either, although I once spent an evening doing mosaic together with my daughter. That was nice because we were doing something together.

For me, curiosity needs a reason.

If a friend said, “Don’t ask questions, just come with me,” I would probably go. It is a friend. This person knows me, and I know them. There is already trust.

If one of my daughters said the same thing, I would definitely have questions. Perhaps they only want to show me something we could buy, in which case it might be safer for my bank account not to go at all.

With somebody I do not know very well, it would be different again. I would need more description, more precision. What are we doing? Where are we going? Why?

So perhaps my formula is fifty-fifty: fifty percent curiosity, fifty percent trust.

Red Like a Tomato.

Tennis is a good example of something that has returned unexpectedly to my life.

I used to play, but it has been about ten years since I played officially. Now I have agreed to take part in a competition, which means I needed some practice.

The training was hot. Very hot.

In a match there are natural pauses, but in training you keep playing. You run, hit the ball, run again and continue. After one hour I was finished. Completely tired.

I was red like a tomato.

Still, I did not play badly. I am quick, and that helps me. What I am missing is the technical side after so many years away. The women I will play against have official classifications. I do not, because I have been away from official competition for such a long time.

This does not make me especially optimistic.

People want to come and support me, which sounds nice in theory. In reality, I think it will make me more stressed. I hate losing, and I cannot really imagine that I will win.

There are possibilities, of course. Perhaps there will be a lot of wind. Perhaps my opponent will have the wind against her and all her balls will fly outside the court.

Then I can have some points.

You never know.

I have arranged to share the competition with another player, so I only need to play two matches rather than four. That is enough for me. I have other commitments on some Saturdays, and I am not trying to become a professional tennis player after ten years away.

But I said yes.

Sometimes curiosity is not about discovering something completely new. Sometimes it is about finding out whether an old part of yourself is still there.

The Things We Cannot Plan.

At the moment, though, the thing I am most curious about is much closer to home.

One of my daughters is beginning university and moving into her own apartment. She is excited, and she is motivated by the international side of her studies and the amount of English she expects to use.

There are also many practical things we still have to discover. How will she travel backwards and forwards? Will she use the train or the car? What will be easiest with luggage? What will make sense when fuel is expensive?

We do not know yet.

“We will see and react on the situation we will have.”

Even the furniture is creating questions. She wants to take a sofa from our house to her apartment. Unfortunately, the family cat considers this sofa to be its own property. The cat sleeps there regularly, and I am not convinced it has approved the moving arrangements.

Perhaps the cat already suspects something.

The bigger questions cannot be solved so easily.

How will my daughter react to living alone? How will she manage a new school and a new environment? Will she become more mature? Will she go out too often during the week? Will she be safe?

I hope she will change in a good direction. My husband tells me that perhaps I put too much pressure on myself about this. I may have an idea of how she should change, and reality may not follow my plan.

He is probably right that I cannot decide the direction for her.

That is difficult, because this is where curiosity becomes mixed with worry.

I can ask questions. I can help. I can give advice. But in the end, she will have experiences that I will not see. She will make decisions herself. She may listen to everything we say and still do what she wants.

And perhaps that is part of growing up too.

For both of us.

I can prepare for a journey. I can practise for a tennis match. I can ask a friend where we are going before I get into the car. But not everything gives us that kind of control.

Sometimes we only discover the answer by living through it.

For now, I think fifty-fifty is still a good balance: curious enough to go, careful enough to ask, and willing to see what happens when the plan finally meets real life.