Engaging our "what is it?"

While reading Michael Easter's Scarcity Brain, I learned that Maslow (yeah, the famous hierarchy of needs guy) ran some experiments involving dogs, noticing that when they came into a space, they immediately investigated everything, rushing here and there, sniffer active, in the effort to figure things out. Maslow gave this a formal, science-y name but colloquially dubbed it the dog's "what is it?" In the context of human evolution and the quest to discover useful information, Maslow applied this insight and included "exploration" among his delineation of essential human needs.

When did you last fulfill this need?

If it's been a while--if you haven't explored in the last week, it's been too long--I challenge you to engage your "what is it?" Explore an alley, a dumpster, the origins of a word or phrase. Explore your motivations or new bicycle route or different means for getting to work. Explore a new spice or ingredient or country with your cooking. Explore tackling a task you normally outsource to the "experts" or what it feels like to write or draw with your non-dominant hand. Explore the night sky or what's happening on the underside of leaves.

Why bother with this? Because it's an essential human need. You need to explore in order to grow, to learn, to find useful and sometimes life-changing information. You might even stumble into awe or mystery or discover that you have abilities that are dormant and must be awakened. If you are feeling humdrum and dull, it might be because this need for exploration, engaging your "what is it?" has been going unmet for too long. Unmet needs equal suffering. Happily, unlike some of the other needs, this one is totally free to meet and you don't have to rely on anyone else to meet it. Might be worth paying as much attention to meeting this need as you do, say, to eating and sleeping comfortably.

And if you have a dog, so much the better. They are masters of "what is it?"