There are many things in life that I am not responsible for – in other words, “I didn’t do it!” I didn’t choose the color of my hair or my eyes. I didn’t choose my parents or who my brothers and sisters would be. My race & nationality were determined before I was born. And no one asked me whether I wanted to be a boy or a girl.

Every child should have the Serenity Prayer implanted in their mind before they come into the world or at least ‘soon after’.

That prayer is:

Every kid needs to know that he cannot, by his own strength, make himself any taller. Whatever is going to be – is going to be. That saying is not true about everything, but it is about some things.

The best thing to do is “simply accept the inevitable – then figure out how we are going to deal with it”. For instance: The sun is going to come up every morning whether you like it or not. You can’t change that, but you can pull the covers over your head as soon as light starts streaming in your windows. You could also cover the windows with thick drapes or you could simply ‘get up when the sun does’ and ‘get on with life’.

Each child is born with an innate sense of curiosity. Put a string of bells over an infant’s bed and he will constantly hit and kick at them. Infants can’t talk or ask questions, so they experiment with actions. Later on, as they begin to crawl, they will put all kinds of objects in their mouths. That’s their unspoken way of asking, “What is this?” “How does it feel?” “Does it taste good?” Without the aid of language, their brain begins to compute the difference between ‘sweet and sour’, ‘hot and cold’, and ‘hard and soft’.

Eventually, they learn words and begin asking, “What’s that? What’s that?” and then they graduate to become a ‘why baby’ – asking “why” about everything. They want to know much more than we can ever tell them.

Our impatience, frustration and anger often squelches part of their curiosity – and sometimes inhibits a good part of their personality as well as limiting their potential in life. Parents who encourage the natural inquisitiveness of their children are probably doing them a great favor.

However, in every area of life, there must be limits and boundaries. A child who wants to know why the electric stove ‘glows red’ will soon find out that curiosity has its painful side effects. Should parents encourage natural inquisitiveness by giving their child a box of matches? I don’t think so.

Somewhere in life children must be exposed to the ‘Wisdom Of Warnings’! They must learn the value of learning without doing. It is often wise to take someone else’s word for things that we don’t want to experience first hand. We don’t let kids run freely in heavy traffic, do we? If we did, they wouldn’t run very long.

Sure, we can let kids learn ‘on their own’ – sometimes. But, if we insist that they find out ‘on their own’ what it’s like to die – well, what can I say – we sure won’t be able to insist that they learn anything else after that, will we?

Thomas Edison had a natural curiosity that was mixed with a tenacious persistence. No one can even imagine how much harm and damage could have come from those traits if they had been joined together in a criminal mindset. But, Mr. Edison was a good man and his curiosity produced, not only the light bulb, but many helpful inventions.

Millions of criminals are exceptionally talented. They just got sidetracked before they could find a useful purpose for their gifting. The sad part is, most of them never get back on track – ever.

Why? Well, it seems that their natural curiosity reached for an experience with alcohol or drugs before it reached for an experimental test tube. Their inventive imaginations dreamed up a lazy man’s way of getting wealth. Those imaginations were utterly imperfect though, because they failed to imagine what would happen if they were caught. They failed to imagine the consequences for their actions.

Children who feed on a constant diet of bad emotional experiences soon develop a twisted sense of curiosity and indulge themselves with warped imaginations. One teenager opened up to me and confessed to some horrible ideas he was entertaining. He would lay away at night on his bed, dreaming up all kinds of ways of killing his mother, his father, his brother and people who had teased him or treated him unfairly. Luckily, I got to him before he could ever carry out any of those hateful fantasies.

So, where am I going with all this? Well, to tell you the truth, I went back to the beginning of my life to think up things to write about – things that might be of some value to others. It’s true that we are individuals and we are all different in many ways. But, every one of us have had thoughts, feelings and experiences which others can relate to. There is always a little bit of us in everyone else.

One of my very first memories had to do with childhood curiosity. Want to hear it? Well, this is a crazy memory because it’s so incomplete. All I remember is the overwhelming sense of shame I experienced as my older sister held tightly to my hand and dragged her dreadful little brother to the house. I couldn’t have been more than three or four years old. I really and truly do not remember what I did. All I know is that it had something to do with a little girl.

All I can assume is that it must have had to do with a child’s natural curiosity about the opposite sex. If no one had confronted me, I would have never had any memory of the event at all! None, whatsoever! Whatever it was that I discovered about the girl had no meaning or impact on my little mind. It wasn’t even important enough to remember.

But, the harsh confrontation and rough reprimands seemed to burn themselves into my little memory system! I was ‘bad’ for some unknown and undiagnosed reason. My curiosity had stepped across a line that I had never seen or known before. As far as I know, it was a boundary that I had never even been warned about. The consequences I suffered could not have been anticipated or avoided.

I’m sure other kids have similar memories about playing with matches, gasoline or old refrigerators. Sometimes adults don’t think to educate kids beforehand – and their sudden ‘gastric reactions’ scare the fire out of unsuspecting children. Maybe kids need to sense this ‘drastic panic’ which ‘danger’ produces in others, so that they will be more aware of the dire consequences that may be involved.

One of the key purposes of this article is to motivate someone to educate children ahead of time concerning potential dangers of unbridled curiosity. If more 4^th and 5^th graders were shown films depicting the ugly results of ‘mouth cancer’ maybe they would think twice before experimenting with chewing tobacco. If they could see the agonizing pain of a person who is dying of lung cancer, maybe they could visualize the unseen sword that lurks in innocent looking packages of cigarettes.

Since peer pressure is such a strong motivator in spreading the influence of addictive influences – maybe they need to see a group of teenagers laughing at a drunk friend. Perhaps they need to see the same kids looking in disgust at a sloppy drunk friend.

Yes, there are lots of educational films directed at drunk driving and other dangers of life – but maybe we need more. And maybe we need to make those graphic scenes available at an earlier age to make them more effective.

Who knows? But, I’m sure of one thing – someone needs to come up with some extra tools and more effective means of inhibiting curiosity in young people who have a tendency toward making wrong choices.

Another alternative to destructive behavior is ‘the pursuit of constructive goals’. People who are totally immersed in good projects and enjoying themselves will seldom get side tracked into ‘back alley’ pursuits. If parents, friends and educators could light the fires of ‘good motivations’ in kids, many tragedies and disasters could be averted.

Stir up a kids curiosity about the ‘far out’ universe and you might be heading him toward a career in astronomy. You might also keep him from ‘getting high’ on a curious weed or chemical. That kind of a ‘far out’ is never going to produce any good in his life.

Appeal to a kid’s natural inclination toward helping people and you can whet his appetite toward the medical profession or some other noble aspiration for his future. Encourage his curiosity concerning marine life and he may enjoy getting ‘wrapped up in seaweed’ or the study of marine biology. That’s better than getting entangled in the sub-culture of the dope world.

Even sky diving is safer than drunk driving. If kids are bored, steer them toward the other exciting facets of life that don’t have such deadly side-effects. It’s not impossible! Someone in every generation is responsible for gently guiding the delicate minds of growing human beings into positive pursuits.

in someone’s life today!

Get curious as to how that might be done. Don’t veto this idea just because you’re having a ‘bad hair’ day. Allow your curiosity a chance to explore such possibilities. I don’t care how old you are and I’m not worried about how many handicaps mar your present happiness. Somewhere in life you have to find your purpose for living. Just because it has been playing ‘hide-and-seek’ with you for a long time is no reason to quit the game now. Millions of people have found a satisfying pursuit in the later years of their life.

On the other hand, if you are a sensitive teenager and if these words stir you – it is never too early to do something worthwhile with your time. One of these days I hope to host a newspaper column called “I regret”. It will be filled with letters from ordinary people; people who have made unwise choices and want to keep others from taking that same wrong path. You could write such a letter now and urge me to start that project right away. You could hand out blank flyers entitled: “I regret!” and get the ball rolling even faster! Even if you don’t do that, you could do something else worthwhile.

Who knows how many lives you could save and how much misery you could avert? Only God knows and only time can tell. I’m curious – how much good could you do with the one life you have? Aren’t you curious too? Is your curiosity strong enough to make you think longer and harder about the possibilities? Is it strong enough to stir you to action? Can’t that inventive brain of yours come up with constructive fantasies and good imaginations?

If you aren’t already hooked or addicted, then ignore your curiosity about cigarettes, booze, drugs and pornography. Don’t be curious about the maximum speed you can get out of your car. People might be curious about why you were going so fast before you died.

And don’t even think of letting curiosity goad you into wondering what it would be like to have an affair with someone else. Otherwise, when it all ‘hits the fan’ lots of people will be curious as to why you would do such a thing. Your kids will be curious as to why you would want to shame them and abandon your love for them, just to get love from someone else.

And if you are not going to be the ‘subject’ on the grapevine, why be curious about what’s going on there at all? Why waste time imagining what kind of evil other people are up to? Why all the curiosity about things that don’t concern you and things that you have no ‘say so’ about? Your brain was made for better things than that.