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Earlier this week I was slicing a watermelon for our children when this thought hit me - "Who ate the first watermelon?" Now I don't simply mean the first watermelon but the first walnut, the first banana, the first potato; the very things we take for granted in our kitchens as being safe foods for us to eat.

 

Modern day humans should offer a collective "Thank You" to our epicurean forebears not to the Food and Drug Administration. Whether or not you believe our forebears were Adam and Eve or some hunter-gatherer Cro-Magnon ancestor of ours those are the people we need to thank for the knowledge they acquired. At some point in time one of these ancestors perhaps used a stick or sharp rock to dig in the earth in search of a serving of bugs only to discover something akin to the potatoes we enjoy today. What drove our ancestor to take a bite of this new discovery - mere starvation, a publication deadline they faced for a restaurant review, or simply an innate sense of curiosity of all things new and wonderful?  

 

Curiosity is a truly amazing resource not evenly distributed among humans nor can this disparity be remedied via a government program. Curiosity is what drove Thomas Edison to experiment with hundreds of different designs before he perfected the light bulb. Curiosity is what drove Charles Darwin to intently observe nature that provided the foundation for his theory on the origin of species.   

 

Curiosity's cousin - Risk - frequently walks in Curiosity's shadow as these two traits drive the human experience through the ages. While the majority of us probably have some degree of curiosity the reality is that very few of us are curious enough to be risk takers. Society is improved and challenged by the curious risk takers among us whether these people are business entrepreneurs or contemporary artists.   An excellent book that captured the spirit of curious risk takers in Western Civilization is Paul Johnson's Creators - From Chaucer to Walt Disney. Johnson's chapters featured some of history's greatest creators including - Shakespeare, Bach, Twain, Picasso, and of course Walt Disney. Via Johnson we learn of Shakespeare - curious regarding how best to tell a story and a risk taker who faced potential ridicule when his plays were performed. Each chapter is full of valuable insights on the thinking process that drove these great innovators. Similar to how our Cro-Magnon ancestor ate that first potato at the risk of potential death since he had no idea if it was poisonous Johnson's chosen "Creators" sometimes risked their health, family life, and personal wealth in pursuit of their curiosity.   

 

While our Cro-Magnon ancestors risked death as they explore what foods could and could not be consumed we modern humans rarely face any similar dilemma. In our modern world we can simply wake up in the morning and log on to a website to have our groceries delivered to our home cave if we choose. Gone are the days for nearly all Americans when we would have to hunt for the day and/or harvest enough crops to feed ourselves. Our world has been simplified, enriched, and made safer by our predecessors so this provides a wonderful reason for us to pause to consider what useful knowledge we will supply to our descendents.   

 

Our best option as a society is to encourage students to act on their curiosity within the parameters of civil society while we mentor them to be risk takers. Imagine a nation where perhaps half of all our high school students are coached on how to turn one of their ideas into a startup company. Starting and bankrupting a company at age 17 is not a failure – it is a learning experience that can never be replicated in today's classrooms which are dominated by standardized tests and "teaching to the middle."