Translator: Davi Carvalho Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
Thank you.
Thanks a lot.
Thank you very much, yeah.
Well, when I was a kid,
when I was a kid,
one of my best friends in the world lived over the fence of our backyard.
She was probably, I don't know, like in her late 70s when we first met.
She was a diabetic, so eventually she lost both her legs.
That's what they tell you when you're a kid:
Mrs. Gulley lost her legs.
And when you're a kid, you're like,
"Well, they've got to be around here somewhere."
(Laughter)
And occasionally, occasionally, I would arrive on her front porch
with all the woes of childhood,
like the time that Pam Davison got to go to camp Kitaki.
(Laughter)
Camp Kitaki - horseback riding, cookouts, canoe trips.
I had to go to a church camp.
(Laughter)
Church camp.
Like a ride in a basket down the river is a good time.
(Laughter)
Yeah. Fishes and loaves every night.
(Laughter)
And honestly,
getting stoned at church camp -
(Laughter)
that just hurts.
(Laughter)
Sometimes when I arrived on Mrs. Gulley's front porch,
I was so upset I would have trouble getting the words out.
And she would just hold up her hand.
She would reassure me
that she did, in fact, want to hear everything I had to say
but she was concerned about her grass.
Was it growing?
And I knew exactly what I had to do.
I would have to go to the four corners of her backyard,
and I would have to lay my head on the ground,
and watch
and wait until I saw the grass grow.
(Laughter)
And I did -
(Laughter)
because I was gifted.
(Laughter)
In fact, I saw a lot of things.
I would see daddy long-legs and little green lacewings
and sometimes, like, even a caterpillar
and raccoon poop.
And by time I got into Mrs. Gulley's house and sitting at the breakfast nook -
well, I had so much to report.
I did - so many questions to ask -
and those encyclopedias would come out, one letter at a time,
and curiosity thrived
and energy was redirected to a brighter place.
And the world, of course, the world got larger.
That's right. Hey, Windy!
(Laughter)
Anyway, anyway, so there it is:
Curiosity, see,
Curiosity is an ageless, an ageless traveler.
She is a sightseer of the cosmos
with an unquenchable thirst for knowledge.
She is the spontaneous, fiddle-playing great-grandmother of Creativity.
Yeah, she loves to stand in the winds of awe
and dance naked
on the lake of ideas.
Oh yeah, no.
She wants you to know that she is not idle.
(Laughter)
And her cat? Her cat is just fine.
(Laughter)
So there it is:
Curiosity did not kill the cat.
(Laughter)
Yeah, I really,
I really do think it was that car.
(Laughter)
I don't know.
She lives with her twin sister, Lifelong Learning.
I know, kind of a long name.
Her closest friends call her by her initials:
LLL.
(Laughter)
A lot of people can't tell them apart, but Curiosity is two minutes older,
and LLL is more into jazz-Latin fusion.
(Laughter)
She likes to sip Wayne.
She likes to sip wine.
(Laughter)
I know, I know ...
Oh dear!
(Laughter)
Okay, we are going to go ahead and start over.
She likes sipping wine - well, so do I -
(Laughter)
while she stands in the spring rain of epiphanies.
That's what she -
she also enjoys long walks on the beach.
Just kidding. Anyway ...
(Laughter)
The two of them want to extend this,
well, wild, kind of wonderful invitation to you:
Come and visit.
Come and visit anytime.
Come and visit all the time.
Visit, visit them in the music,
visit them at the art walk
and in books and classes.
Visit them in conversations and in your imagination.
They are not concerned about your income
or your title.
They just want to spend time with you while you are driving your cab
or flipping burgers or washing your dishes
or drifting off to sleep.
Your willingness and tenacity
to pursue curiosity and learning
are all that are required for your larger life.
So walk away from the familiar.
Perhaps even get into the habit of doing so,
because it's true, isn't it?
It's really true that what you know can stop you from what you can know.
And there is a whole menu to choose from out there,
and you can fill your plate, and you can feast.
So move your mind, you know, shed your skin.
Otherwise your ideas along with your possibilities
will be like phantom rain,
like the rain that falls in the desert
but evaporates before it ever hits the ground.
(Audience) Aww.
Thank you, love.
(Laughter)
Curiosity always starts with a question, doesn't it?
Damn it, people, I asked you a question!
(Laughter)
You know, there is this great word in the word "question,"
and that is "quest."
Huh? Yeah.
Quest.
So that's a seeking.
You know, it's a journey, it's a pursuit.
It's the Holy Grail.
People, it's a Hundred Acre Wood.
That's what it is.
You need to ask questions.
Questions are at the heart of my business of humor and creativity.
I mean, have you ever wondered even?
Have you ever wondered what a tree thinks when you're putting woodchips at its base?
(Laughter)
"Is it like a - Dad?"
(Laughter)
Questions are the tenants and structure of growth.
Questions are the little ponies that have the potential to become wild horses.
Why?
Because curiosity is the pollen, it is the pollen of creativity.
To be inquisitive is to be open to fooling around with ideas,
to create new synaptical connections,
to be wide awake.
It was said of Leonardo da Vinci
that he was this man who awoke too soon
in total darkness
while all around him slept.
Da Vinci, see, da Vinci. Oh.
You know, what a brilliant human being
who carried a notebook with him everywhere he went
so he could write down his ideas and his musings and etchings and ...
I mean, and his curiosity was so diverse:
I mean, it went to studies of flights
and over here anatomy and botany and then studies of water.
And in his notebooks,
there were ideas and designs for things like a flying machine
and a helicopter
and yeah, you bet, a parachute.
(Laughter)
And trust me, I'm not even touching the tip of the iceberg,
and people go, "Geez, yeah, how did he do all that?
Where he did find the time to do ... ?"
No cable package! That's how.
(Applause)
The average American
minimally spends 8,300 hours on screen time.
Before I cut my cable, I'm telling you, I watched all the CSIs.
Yes, I did. Yes.
If someone died in here right now, I would know exactly what to do.
(Laughter)
That's right. I would swab you all!
(Laughter)
But really, really, do you know
what you could learn, accomplish, create with 8,300 hours?
Even 4,000 hours.
Be curious about that.
Buy yourself a notebook.
And I know some of you are like, "Well, I'm waiting to be inspired.
Yeah, I'm going to move when I get inspired."
I understand.
But I have to agree with the amazing painter Chuck Close,
who said that "inspiration is for amateurs."
The rest of us
just have got to show up and do the work.
And I think the universe has a matching grant for you, see?
I think if you show up and you do your good work,
the road will rise to meet you,
and on that road
is where you're going to find inspiration.
And I believe we all need to be on that road -
for our homes and our neighborhoods,
for our lovely, lovely, lovely Earth,
for the business of life and, no doubt, for the life of business.
You know, we need to be on that road for the romance.
Mrs. Gulley was crazy about her husband, Mel;
her heart would sweat for this man.
But she made it very, very clear -
because he stepped on his rainbow maybe 20 years before she was on her way -
that despite the fact that she loved him so much,
that she truly believed
that the best romance was the romance with life.
And that if you are having a great romance with life,
there was a real good possibility that all your other romances would thrive.
So there it is, love, yep, little baby.
You have a great romance with life.
Be curious.
Fall in love with learning.
Ask questions.
Listen well.
Fill a notebook with your words, your ideas.
And then, yeah, every once in a while,
you better be putting your head down in the grass.
Thank you.
(Applause)