February 26, 2025
The artifact of joyous exploration
Among the many dimensions of curiosity, the behavior with the highest correlation with wellbeing, life satisfaction and meaning, is called joyous exploration.
This means investigating things for the positive experience of it. Learning about subjects that are unfamiliar to you. Seeking out new situations where it’s likely that you will have to think in depth about something.
In short, the quest for knowledge. Living life of the mind.
Clinically speaking, when joyous exploration is present, people feel a love of learning, a sense of fascination about activities, places, and things.
They don’t experience discomfort and annoyance until they resolve their information gaps. They’re simply consumed with wonder about the fascinating features of the world. It’s the pleasurable experience of finding life intriguing.
Senior year of college. I had already been wearing a nametag every day for twelve months. And I knew that I was going to write book about my experience. A quirky collection of field research form wearing a nametag every day.
So each week, I went to the library and sit down with a librarian to aid my quest for knowledge. I can still picture myself sitting there, twenty one years old, asking some random graduate student what keywords I should use to validate my theory about the positive effects of wearing a nametag.
He printed out a list of books on subjects identity, psychology, anthropology, semiotics, social capital, interpersonal communication, and more. I felt like a drug addict with a season pass to an opium farm. I mainlined that shit like black tar heroin. Probably did more reading in that few months than all my years in college combined.
Because the curiosity activated my brain’s reward system and lit up my dopamine pathways. In fact, I still have my original black and white marbled composition notebook from my nametag project.
The first artifact of my joyous exploration.
Do you explore things for the positive experience of it? What fascinating features of the world consume you?
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