Why Curiosity Keeps You Awake

I arrived in Athens, Greece, and immediately felt it—that shift in perspective that only happens when you’re somewhere for the first time, walking with wonder.

The city was graffiti-covered and gritty, built on marble, history, and ruin, with design choices that felt both ancient and improvised. I wandered through neighborhoods where Byzantine churches sat beside brutalist apartment blocks, where street art draped over neoclassical facades, and where the Acropolis rose above it all like a reminder that everything here is layered. After weeks immersed in the minimalism of the Cyclades, the texture felt like a breath of contrast—raw, alive, unexpected.

I climbed high above the city to explore the Acropolis and watched how the light moved across the rooftops in post-rain clean air. Colors emerged differently from that height. And in that moment, something I’d been trying to articulate for weeks finally clicked: I need these immersive travel experiences to reset how I see. This is my why.

Walking With Wonder Activates Perception

This feeling, this heightened attention and childlike wonder, is more than necessary; it’s fundamental and neurological. Curiosity keeps you awake.

When certainty becomes your default, you stop noticing, and perception dulls. Wonder is the antidote.

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The Medicine of Wonder

When you arrive somewhere new, everything matters.

You notice how people greet each other. How they cross the street. How the light bends through the day. You catch the tempo of traffic, the scent of food rising from open windows, the cadence of unfamiliar syllables being exchanged in the street.

Your brain can’t run on autopilot when nothing is familiar enough to ignore. It’s forced to pay attention, to reorient, to open. When the brain is placed in a novel environment, it suspends default mode processing. It pauses prediction. And in that pause, you pay attention.

This is why novelty feels energizing. It stretches your perception and expands your sense of time. It prepares the brain to learn, to adapt, to come alive again.

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What the Greeks Understood

The Greeks didn’t chase certainty. They questioned, wandered, and made space for not knowing.

Socrates once said that wisdom begins in wonder. ¹ When the jury offered him a deal, his life in exchange for silence, he refused. He claimed the unexamined life is not worth living. Perhaps he wasn’t only speaking about philosophy. Perhaps he meant the kind of awareness that emerges when you walk slowly through the world and actually see it.

To wander without an itinerary, to notice rather than judge, to stay open instead of arriving at answers—this was a kind of intelligence they valued. The kind that belongs to the street-level thinker, the artist, and the seeker. It is the intelligence of perception.

Even their heroes, like Odysseus, were not praised for strength alone. His gifts were his cleverness, his adaptability, and his ability to navigate the unknown. His journey home was a process of noticing, choosing, and learning.

That kind of curiosity, rooted in presence and sharpened by experience, was considered heroic.

Maybe it still is.

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The Neuroscience of Walking With Wonder

How Dopamine Shapes Discovery

Dopamine doesn’t reward what’s already known. It anticipates what’s about to be discovered. This neurochemical primes the hippocampus to encode memory, signaling to the nervous system, “This might be worth remembering.”

In Tuning Your Frequency, we explored how resonance shapes what you notice. Dopamine amplifies that signal, pointing not toward comfort but toward aliveness… and that demands continued curiosity.

Travel doesn’t cure certainty. But it reminds you that your way of doing things isn’t the only way. That you don’t have everything figured out.

Why Novelty Sparks Neuroplasticity

Even brief moments of wonder, when fully felt, increase neuroplasticity, your brain’s ability to form new neural pathways. Novelty helps your brain become more responsive, more flexible, more awake. We explore this more in Creative Adaptability.

Research shows that novel environments increase brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF), a protein essential for learning, adaptation, and emotional resilience. ² But novelty doesn’t just help you learn new information. It reminds you that learning is still possible.

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A Life Worth Noticing

When I wander through Athens, Antiparos, or Tinos, or any place I don’t yet fully understand, I’m not following a fixed plan. I’m letting the world reveal itself, detail by detail.

Most people move quickly, focused on where they’re going instead of what they’re seeing. But when you slow down, your attention recalibrates. You begin to notice.

This morning, caught in the rain and too close to home to take a taxi, I walked and waited between awnings and trees. And in those moments of pause, I began to see marble. Everywhere.

A few weeks ago, I visited the Museum of Marble Crafts in Tinos. That experience stayed with me. In the middle of the storm, I could feel the difference between the flecked marble of Naxos and the deeper veins from the Peloponnese. I thought about where each piece came from, what part of the land, and what century it was likely used in. The more I looked, the more the street became a story. The more I noticed, the more Athens revealed itself.

This is what it means to live with perception turned on. Noticing becomes a way of belonging to time, to place, and to the materials that hold memory and meaning.

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Small Acts to Reignite Wonder

You don’t need to travel to practice this. You simply need to interrupt the patterns that allow you to stop noticing.

• Walk your neighborhood like a stranger. What would you notice if you didn’t already know what everything was for?
• Ask someone how they do something ordinary. Ask questions and listen. Remember that there are other ways to do things.
• Learn three phrases in a language you don’t speak. Notice how your breath and mouth adjust and how you listen differently.
• Change one daily pattern, such as taking a different route home or ordering something you’ve never tried. This will reawaken your attention.

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What Athens Taught Me

I’m writing this from the 7th-floor apartment I’ve rented in the Kolonaki neighborhood next to Lycabettus Hill, watching people move through streets that were laid out before anyone alive today was born. The Acropolis is visible from here, massive and weathered and somehow still standing.

Wandering as a Way of Life

The Greeks understood this.

Their heroes didn’t wander to collect wisdom. They wandered to stay in the question, to resist the dull comfort of already knowing. Walking with wonder doesn’t always require wandering. But to wander, especially without a fixed destination, often invites wonder in.

Call it awe or dopamine in motion. The Greeks called it divine madness. Both refer to the same pull—the urge to approach what you haven’t yet understood. The hunger to keep seeing.

It’s a practice. Not an answer, but a way of staying awake. And for the Art of Seeing, curiosity is the oxygen we breathe to remain open to receive.

x

Anna

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Where to Begin

If you feel drawn to cultivate curiosity as a practice, here are a few resources:

• Finding Your True North – An essay on navigating by what keeps you curious
• The True North Blueprint – A clarity workbook for what calls you forward
• The Vision Mapping Toolkit – Turn your ideas into a compelling visual plan

You’ll also be added to The Frame, my newsletter on perception, creativity, and becoming.

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Citations

1. Plato, Theaetetus, 155d. ↩︎
2. Doidge, Norman. The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science. Viking/Penguin, 2007. ↩︎