Episode 57: Down the Rabbit Hole

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There is a very specific kind of energy that apparently only exists when we should be sleeping. I can be completely exhausted at ten o’clock at night, unwilling to deal with laundry sitting three feet away from me, and fully committed to letting tomorrow’s Jody handle whatever is left of the day.

Then I see something that doesn’t make sense.

Suddenly I’m awake. One search leads to another, the questions get more specific, and before long I have seventeen tabs open while trying to track down an original source for something I didn’t even know existed twenty minutes ago. The laundry, obviously, has not moved.

I love a good rabbit hole. I always have. Human behavior is probably one of my biggest triggers, but it can happen with almost anything. Religion, politics, family history, a book, some random historical event, or an actor I recognize from a movie can send me looking. The subject isn’t really the interesting part. What fascinates me is what happens once something catches our curiosity and we suddenly need to know more.

One Answer Has a Funny Way of Creating Another Question

There are millions of things I don’t know right now, and I’m perfectly comfortable with most of them. I have no idea how my refrigerator works. Food goes in, food stays cold, and we have maintained a perfectly healthy relationship based on me not asking too many questions.

Tell me one weird thing about refrigerators that doesn’t make sense, though, and now we have a problem.

Before that moment, I didn’t even know there was something I didn’t know. Give me one piece of information and suddenly I can see the missing piece beside it. That’s often how a rabbit hole begins. We learn enough to ask a question we couldn’t have asked before, and the answer gives us enough information to ask a better one.

Knowing more doesn’t always make the question smaller. Sometimes it makes the whole thing bigger.

That probably explains why rabbit holes can have so much momentum. There is no deadline and usually no reward. Half the time there isn’t even a point. We simply want the next answer.

Curiosity Can Change While We’re Digging

This is where it gets more complicated for me.

I might start a search with a very simple question: Is this true? I start digging and discover that one part checks out while another doesn’t. With some of the darker subjects I’ve researched, discovering that something isn’t true can actually be a relief.

My brain still notices what was true, though.

That can create another question. Maybe there’s more. Maybe I haven’t found it yet. Maybe something really is there.

Or maybe there isn’t.

I think genuine curiosity has to leave room for that possibility too. If finding evidence confirms what I believe, but not finding evidence convinces me that the evidence must be hidden, I’ve created a belief I can never disprove. There would be no possible answer that could make me reconsider it.

That’s a very different kind of hole.

Would I still want the next answer if I knew it might wreck my theory?

I like that question because it turns curiosity back on itself. There is a difference between searching for what happened and searching for proof that what I already believe happened. From inside our own heads, those two searches can feel remarkably similar.

When the Internet Starts Helping

The internet adds another layer to all of this because it gets very good at noticing what keeps our attention.

I search something, click something, watch something, and suddenly more of the same subject starts appearing. Before long, it can feel like everyone is talking about the thing I’ve been researching. Maybe they are. But it’s also possible I’ve spent three hours showing my phone exactly what will make me stop scrolling.

At the beginning of a rabbit hole, I’m actively choosing the next question. Eventually, the next piece of information may simply be waiting for me.

At what point did I stop digging and start being fed?

That doesn’t automatically make the information wrong. It just changes how I think about what I’m seeing. Something can feel common because it has become common in my feed, and the things I spend enough time looking at naturally become easier for me to recognize elsewhere.

The Rabbit Holes We Carry Around

My mother recently told me that she hopes I’ll someday be on a big talk show, something like Oprah. It was a very sweet thing for her to say.

A normal daughter might have simply said, “Thanks, Mom.”

I jokingly told her I was never selling my soul to the devil for fame.

What?!

My mother gave me a compliment and my brain opened a conspiracy folder.

The funny part is that I knew exactly where the joke came from. I’ve been down enough rabbit holes that certain ideas, names, and connections have been stored away in my head for years. The tabs may be closed, but apparently the files remain.

Some holes seem to work that way. Months can go by without thinking about something, and then a name comes up or a new piece of information appears and the whole thing is suddenly active again.

The hole wasn’t closed. It was quiet.

That makes me wonder about the connections I notice when an old rabbit hole comes back around.

Did I recognize a connection… or did I make one?

I don’t always know. I’m not sure any of us always know.

Research Can Look a Lot Like Progress

Rabbit holes don’t have to involve strange corners of the internet. Sometimes they look incredibly responsible.

Research another option. Read another article. Compare one more thing. Watch another video just to make sure. There are plenty of times when gathering more information is exactly what we need to do before making a decision.

There are also times when I already know enough and simply don’t want to make the decision yet.

That distinction can be difficult to see because research feels productive. My brain is busy. I’m doing something. I can even tell myself that I’m being responsible by gathering all the information before I move forward.

For the fourth night in a row.

At some point, I have to ask myself whether I’m actually missing information or whether I’m hoping another hour of research will postpone whatever comes next.

Am I still looking for information… or am I looking for permission to wait?

That may be one of the stranger contradictions of curiosity. I can spend hours trying to find an answer that has absolutely nothing to do with my life while avoiding an answer that actually does.

Some Answers Ask Something of Us

Maybe the difference is that not all information costs us the same thing.

Most rabbit-hole information only asks for my attention. I can learn something interesting, close the tab, and continue with my day. Information about my own life can be different because knowing something may require me to respond to it.

If I open the email, I might have to deal with what it says. If I ask the question, I might hear an answer I don’t like. If I have the conversation, I may no longer be able to pretend I don’t know something.

There are answers we desperately chase and others we carefully avoid. Both behaviors can come from the same brain.

Knowing is weird like that.

What Comes Back Up With Us?

Some of my favorite rabbit holes aren’t particularly cheerful. Human behavior fascinates me, and unfortunately, humans can be awful. The darker side of what people are capable of can keep me reading for hours.

Eventually I close the tabs, but I’ve still spent that time immersed in a pretty dark version of humanity. I don’t always leave everything I found there when I walk away.

That doesn’t mean holes are dangerous or that we should stop exploring difficult subjects. It does make me more interested in what happens after the search. The information we spend time with can become part of what we notice later, what raises our suspicion, what makes us more compassionate, what questions we ask, and what connections seem familiar.

That isn’t limited to dark subjects either. A rabbit hole can leave us with something useful, challenge something we believed, introduce us to an entirely new interest, or simply teach us one wonderfully random thing we didn’t know yesterday.

Not everything we learn has to improve us. Sometimes wanting to know is reason enough.

Stay Curious

After all of this, I still love a good rabbit hole. I don’t want to lose the part of me that can see something strange and immediately think, Wait. What? I like asking questions, finding the original source, following unexpected connections, and occasionally realizing that an entire evening disappeared because I wanted one more answer.

I don’t want less curiosity. I just want to pay attention to where mine takes me.

Because going down the hole is the easy part.

It’s what we take from it that matters.

Stay curious.

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