Eulogy for the Curious

Virginia had always been curious about things that did not quite add up. She liked connecting the dots, finding patterns in the way things crossed and overlapped, and making sense of what others might dismiss as happenstance.

A person's hesitation before answering a question. The peculiar conviction with which someone defended an opinion they had borrowed from another. The small discrepancies between what people remembered and what they insisted had happened. She noticed these things, collected them, and turned them over in her mind long after there was any practical reason to do so. She could spend an unreasonable amount of time on the smallest detail, following one thought into another, convinced that if she looked closely enough, something would eventually make sense.

She had never considered this a fault. Curiosity, to her, was a form of vigilance. It kept a person from being easily deceived, including by the person they were most inclined to trust.

Herself, for instance.

She had once taken a certain pride in that. The ability to question her own reasoning, to revisit a conclusion and dismantle it if the evidence required it, had always seemed to her a better measure of intelligence than defending an argument at all costs. She had little patience for people who mistook stubbornness for conviction, or certainty for understanding.

Lately, though, she had begun to wonder whether she was quite as good at this as she thought.

That morning, she found herself unable to remember whether she had locked the door.

It was a small thing, hardly worth the attention she was giving it. She could remember standing there, the key in her hand, thinking that the latch needed repairing. She remembered the slight resistance when she turned the key, or thought she did. Then a bee had appeared close to her face, and she had drawn back instinctively, more irritated by the interruption than frightened by it.

She remembered the bee. She remembered her irritation. She even remembered watching it hover for a moment before it moved away.

What she could not remember was whether she had locked the door!

Virginia tried to retrace the moments that followed, but her recollection seemed to end just where she needed it to continue. She could picture herself turning away, feel the heat on her back as the sun shone unreasonably brightly that morning. She could almost see herself gathering her things by the door, twisting her hair into a loose bun and tucking a stray strand behind her ear as she bent to pick up what she had left there. Then leaving, as she had done countless times before.

It was what she would ordinarily have done. The problem was that knowing what she would probably have done was not quite the same as remembering what she had actually done.

That was what bothered her.

She considered going back. It would take only a few minutes. She could put the key in the lock, turn it, and settle the matter. The door would either be locked or it would not, and she could get on with her day.

Yet she hesitated.

It was not the inconvenience. She had turned back for less, retraced her steps over things she had misplaced and returned to conversations long after everyone else had moved on. She disliked leaving things unfinished, particularly when a little attention might put them right.

But checking the door would only tell her whether it was locked now. It would not tell her whether she had locked it before leaving. She could confirm the state of the lock, but the missing moment would remain missing.

That was what bothered her most. Not the forgotten moment itself, but the others that had come before it. Small things, individually unremarkable, each easily dismissed at the time. A name that had been just beyond reach. A reason for entering a room that had vanished by the time she got there. Something she had meant to say, lost somewhere between thinking it and opening her mouth.

Nothing worth worrying about on its own. But lately, they had begun to add up, and Virginia was not someone who could look at a collection of small things without wondering whether they belonged together.

It was rather like finding pieces of a puzzle scattered across a table. She could turn them over, examine their edges, try them against one another. But there was a difference between putting a puzzle together and arranging the pieces into a picture she wanted to see.

She found this ridiculous! It was a door, not a philosophical problem. She could almost hear herself explaining the distinction to someone else, only to be met with the sort of look that suggested she needed to get out more. Or medication! Hah!

A chuckle began to form, but somehow it came out as a huff.

There. At least she could still laugh at herself, even if the laughter occasionally needed assistance. That had always been one of her better qualities. She could find the absurdity in a situation without losing sight of the truth hiding somewhere within it.

For a moment, she considered the possibility that she was simply tired. She was, of course. She had been tired before, tired of being tired, and she had forgotten things before, as everyone did. There was no need to turn an ordinary lapse into evidence of anything.

It was a perfectly reasonable explanation.

Perhaps a little too reasonable. No one could ever say she was not reasonable!!!

What bothered her was how quickly she had reached for it, how grateful she was to have something that might allow her to stop thinking about the matter. She knew how easily a person could settle on an explanation because it was convenient. She had watched people select the facts that supported their version of events, quietly set aside the ones that did not, and arrive at a conclusion they could defend with complete sincerity.

They were not necessarily lying. That was what made it difficult to challenge them. They saw what they wanted to see, and what they did not want to see seemed, quite conveniently, to escape their notice. They could be entirely sincere in their beliefs and still be wrong.

Virginia had never thought sincerity was the same as truth. A person could be entirely sincere and still have mistaken a part for the whole.

She wondered whether a person could do something similar with a truth they already recognized. Not deny it exactly, but keep looking at it from different angles, hoping another perspective might make it easier to live with.

She knew something about that.

There were matters she had revisited so often that she could no longer pretend she was looking for new information. She knew the arguments for and against. She knew what she had once believed, what she had since reconsidered, and which explanations had survived scrutiny. She had been fair, or had tried to be. She had given doubt its due.

And still, she returned to the same place.

It was tempting to think there must be something left to discover. Virginia had always preferred a question to an answer that arrived too easily. Questions left room for movement. An answer, once accepted, had a way of closing doors she might not be ready to close.

She knew this was not quite the same as being open-minded.

She also knew she was very good at making it sound like it was.

The thought brought a reluctant smile to her face. There was something almost embarrassing about recognizing one's own evasions. It would have been easier if she could blame someone else, find a flaw in the reasoning, or discover some overlooked detail that changed everything. At least then she would have something to work with.

But sometimes there was nothing left to examine. The facts were what they were. Whatever had happened had happened, regardless of how many times she returned to it. Its meaning would not change simply because she found a more comfortable way to describe it.

She had already admitted as much to herself. She was flawed, an inconvenient truth she often lamented but also took a certain pride in acknowledging. It made her human, after all. To err was human, and she had never expected herself to be the exception.

That was the part she could not dress up as curiosity.

Virginia looked at the time and realized she had spent far too long standing there. The day was moving on without waiting for her to finish her thoughts. Somewhere nearby, a car door slammed. Someone called out to someone else. Life, as usual, was carrying on with very little interest in whether she had reached a satisfactory conclusion.

She started walking.

She was still curious. She suspected she always would be. There would always be things she wanted to understand, inconsistencies she wanted to untangle, questions that followed her home long after everyone else had forgotten them. She saw no reason to apologize for that.

But perhaps she could learn to recognize the difference between a question that needed answering and one she kept asking because she already knew the answer.

The distinction would not make her less curious. It might simply make her more honest about what she was doing with her curiosity.

She thought of the door again and shook her head.

Honestly, she thought, what a thing to spend a morning on! Ugh!!!

Then she laughed, properly this time, and went on with her day. © Lyia Meta. All rights reserved.

WITHOUT WALLS -- words and music by Lyia Meta