What Are You Still Curious About?

I think a lot about what keeps us young. Not looking young. Not acting young. I mean the part of us that still believes there is something ahead worth discovering.

For me, it is curiosity.

I’m still curious about places I haven’t been. People I haven’t met. Clothes I haven’t worn. Ideas I haven’t considered. I’m curious about why some things move me and others don’t.

Mostly, though, I’m still curious about myself.

Who else can I become? What can I do better? What am I wrong about? What haven't I tried? What does the best version of me even look like—and does that answer keep changing?

I hope so.

Herschede probably doesn’t exist without that curiosity. Opening a men’s store at this point in my life wasn't the obvious next chapter. I had spent 26 years doing something entirely different. But I wanted to know what would happen if I took all the things I loved—clothes, music, art, conversation, people, atmosphere—and built a place around them.

I was curious.

Curiosity has given me more than I expected.

It gives me reasons to get up in the morning. There is always another song to hear, another person to know, another idea to wrestle with. A life with things left to discover feels bigger than one where you've decided you already know what you like and who you are.

Curiosity also makes the world less lonely.

Ask someone a real question and then actually care about the answer. Wonder why they believe what they believe. Find out what excites them. What scares them. What they’ve survived. What they love. You may not agree with them, but curiosity can get you somewhere judgment rarely does.

It creates empathy. Sometimes admiration. Sometimes understanding.

There are things people go through that I can't pretend to understand. But I can be curious enough to listen. To try to understand without assuming I know how it feels. Curiosity doesn't always need to find an answer. Sometimes it just needs to make us willing to hear someone else's.

And I think curiosity makes relationships better.

Friendships deepen when we don't assume we already know everything about each other. The same is true of love. I’ve been married a long time, and I never want to reach a point where I believe there is nothing left for me to discover about Molly.

I think curiosity makes you a better lover, too.

I’ll leave a little space after that sentence.

Curious is also a better form of interesting.

We spend a lot of energy trying to be interesting. Interesting clothes. Interesting stories. Interesting careers. Interesting lives. But some of the most interesting people I know aren't trying particularly hard to be interesting. They're interested.

They ask questions. They listen. They notice things. They still get excited.

Music may be where I feel this most. There are songs I have loved for decades, and they still matter to me. But I never want those songs to become a wall that keeps new music out. There is something incredible about hearing a song you've never heard before and suddenly needing to hear it again. And again. At 59, I still want music to surprise me.

I want life to do that, too.

Curiosity is simply refusing to decide that you've seen enough, heard enough, loved enough, learned enough or become enough.

I don't know what the best version of me looks like.

I'm still curious.

-E