Nosy

Jessica and I were talking tonight about various people in my life. I was telling her about friends who were pregnant, those who had a couple children, some with their first. I was telling her about my ultimate friends, my gardening friends, my (now-ex) co-workers, my possible new co-workers, and other people when our conversation drifted to one friend in particular.

We talked about him for a while, until she started asking questions about him that I couldn't answer. I mean, I thought I knew this guy pretty well, but what was his favorite color? Um... I can't say I recall Mark's or Doyle's or Mike's or Andy's or Roshan's or anyone's favorite color but Kris', mine and my little brother's (but his might have changed from the red it was growing up to green or blue or purple, for all I know).

If you're wondering, mine is yellow. Cornflower yellow to be more exact. Not that you can tell with my website.

The conversation led to more questions, though, and even fewer that I could answer. Jessica was surprised. Some of the questions seemed obvious to ask, about significant events that my knowing about wouldn't have seemed unreasonable. Wasn't I curious to know?

The stories had never been offered. I never asked.

Curiosity is an interesting urge, one that I've always had in spades. Not knowing something would drive me nuts, and to anger sometimes, when I was younger. Sure, academically, such a desire is a tremendous force. In the real world, however, needing to know that which, in reality, you don't REALLY need to know, leads to all sorts of heartache, both in the knowing and the not knowing.

The idea of not knowing, and being okay with not knowing, is a remarkably new phenomenom for me. I'm still curious about a lot, and sure, there are a lot of conversations I would love to overhear, decisions I would love to know the reasoning behind, and events of which I would love to be the fly on the wall.

However, knowing isn't always what it's cracked up to be. Sometimes the knowing causes pain in ways we could have never foreseen. And sometimes not knowing is a fine state to be in, because sometimes having the knowledge, knowing the trainwreck that's about to happen, and being unable to affect the outcome, can be an overwhelming burden.

If my friends want to share stories of their past with me, I'll certainly listen. Those are their stories to tell. If they're not ready to tell me, or are never ready to tell me, that's fine, too.

I guess I've finally learned not to be nosy.

If only I could learn tact. That would be nice.