Amazing People Are Often Hidden Beneath Our Shallow Curiosities

What I find about human nature interesting is their curiosity and ability to understand the world around us. Unlike other animals on Earth, we strive to make sense of most everything. Our ability to categorize and understand is one of many things that I feel make us incredible beings.

But what if I tell you that it can also be one of things that I find most repulsive about our human nature?

It is great that we are curious in nature. We have made great advancement because of this. But because of this curious nature, it leads us to ask too many questions about why something is the way it is. This sways us from what is really important in the matter.

I have a friend who has been really great to me. I always joke around and say it was fate that put us in the same math class where we had met. A part of me actually does believe that it was fate. During that time, I was going through a huge transition in my life. It was the time where you learn a lot about yourself as a person. He showed me kindness, patience, love, and support. His ability to stay a good person after the world has shown him nothing but hardship was inspiring to me. It wasn’t a romantic relationship in any way, it was just a genuinely good friendship.

We formed a big mutual friends circle since we became very close. The subject of his sexual orientation became a regular topic in our friends’ conversation when he wasn’t around because he possessed certain qualities that people would deem “feminine”. He would mention his recent ex girlfriend of two years from time to time, talking about their past experiences and problems. I suppose this confused people. They would ask me, since him and I were so close, if I had ever asked him if he were gay and would be surprised when I told them no.

Let me tell you why this bothers me deeply.

I don’t wonder when I meet someone new who “seems straight” whether they are straight or not. It doesn’t say anything about their intelligence, kindness, loyalty, or how good of a person someone is. We don’t need to suspect he is hiding anything because in reality, that factor is so minuscule to what is really important. While I see a person who is so incredibly, unselfishly giving, others are wondering if he likes men or women.

And that’s the problem with us.

Philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche writes in his work, “On Truth and Lies in a Nonmoral Sense”,

“Every concept originates through our equating what is unequal. No leaf ever wholly equals another, and the concept “leaf” is formed through an arbitrary abstraction from these individual differences, through forgetting the distinctions; and now it gives rise to the idea that in nature there might be something besides the leaves which would be “leaf” — some kind of original form after which all leaves have been woven, marked, copied, colored, curled, and painted, but by unskilled hands, so that no copy turned out to be a correct, reliable, and faithful image of the original form.”.

People who say they are not judgmental are the same ones out there asking these kind of unimportant questions. It is human nature to be curious, I get that. But when we are preoccupied wondering what category to place a person in, we forget to look at them out from underneath the surface. You will miss out on the lessons someone can teach you. They can take you through some very humbling experiences. Without even knowing it, you will automatically assign people certain qualities they possess by categorizing them. We need to start looking at the more important matters in life. Every person has a story out there that can teach you something and help you see the world in a different way. Some of these people can be unbelievably amazing. We need to stop trying to figure out the issues that make us feel better just by knowing, rather than ones that actually make us better by learning. Meeting new people can humble you, we just need to start wondering about the right things.