One day I relaxed the restrictive muscles that had been clamped around this area of my mind just to see what would happen if I let go of control and the most wonderful thing emerged.
There was one thing and it could be expressed in one short word: Why?
This thing that I had kept restrained and restricted because it interfered with living in society was this small golden whirlwind like a mini dynamo and all it wanted to know or all it really represented was the inquiry, Why?
I thought Oh, well, if that's all it is, and let it go on its way, and I went on my way and life went on. Then I realized it was arriving and lighting odd things up with its energy, inquiring about things I really didn't have an answer to, a persistent little thing. It would take certain subjects and keep pushing them forward and all the time why?why?why?, always bringing that persistent need for an answer to something that maybe was not life-threatening but life-interesting, simply needing to be sorted out and brought into the realm of understanding. At least, by its reckoning.
So I would try to put answers together for it. For instance, it is curious about DNA. That twisting helix that is infinitely different for every human but still makes humans what they are, each individual with the same probabilities but different levels of physical and mental strengths and traits. I found out a bit more about DNA without becoming an expert, but for curiosity's sake I felt I gathered an understanding of the human grasp. But the dynamo of curiosity and I both agreed that there was more to it. (No, the dynamo of Why? Is not a person, let's just get that understood, OK? J ) But it had become a hobby of mine to get together for play time with it and we had extended our knowledge base just for fun.
Then one day I read something that was excerpted from a book (that I really want to buy) that talked about viruses and DNA. I read that viruses have affected humans to the extent that their DNA is now part of our DNA to the extent that they take up more of it than human DNA! I suddenly felt like I was inside the golden dynamo. Astonishment was rampant in wonderment. The mental picture of a model of DNA appeared with less than half of it colored human and the rest colored with a viral definition. The dynamo presented a new query: What if the virus DNA was removed? Would we then have a "pure" human? Have we lost human DNA to make room for virus DNA? Or did humans survive because they could adapt and include viral DNA? Are we a virus? Is curiosity in our DNA or is it a virus? Is curiosity a result of all that virus DNA we took in?
Then of course the added bit of info was tossed in that due to the close relationship of humans and canines, we actually share some of the same virus DNA that is found in domestic dogs. Will this answer the eternal question of whether humanity has gone to the dogs, or vice versa?
Of course if something is going really screwy with my day, and nothing I do seems to work and everything's just going to the dogs, I know it's not me, it's the darn virus DNA.
And maybe that's why curiosity killed the cat: Not enough virus DNA...
