Curiosity: The Fuel for the Third Act (#718)

This is the third of a four-part blog series. The first two parts are as follows:

Part 1 - Identity: The Third Act and the Third Turn: When the Career Ends but the Story Doesn't. https://www.ricklecouteur.com/post/the-third-act-and-the-third-turn-when-the-career-ends-but-the-story-doesn-t-690

Part 2 - Flow: The Flow State: When You Forget to Look at the Clock. https://www.ricklecouteur.com/post/the-flow-state-when-you-forget-to-look-at-the-clock-691

Five-Point Summary
We may not need to find our purpose.	That can be an intimidating assignment. Curiosity offers a much simpler place to begin.
Curiosity asks rather than declares.	Instead of What should I do with the rest of my life? try: I wonder what would happen if…
The Third Act gives curiosity room to breathe.	When career obligations recede, we can explore interests without needing to justify their usefulness.
Being a beginner is an opportunity, not an embarrassment.	Trying something unfamiliar keeps us learning, questioning and engaged with the world.
Curiosity may lead us somewhere unexpected.	We don't always need to know our destination. Sometimes we simply need to open the next door.

There is a question that seems to follow people into retirement.

What is your purpose now?

It sounds profound.

It also sounds exhausting.

After forty or fifty years of education, career, family, deadlines, responsibilities and achievement, apparently we are expected to retire, and immediately devise another purpose for our existence.

I am beginning to wonder whether we are asking the wrong question.

Perhaps Allison Aubrey, the author of Your Turn, offers us a much better word:

Curiosity.

Aubrey describes taking a sabbatical and setting off on what she calls a curiosity tour.

She went looking for people who seemed to be getting later life right - people displaying energy, creativity, connection, joy and a sense of adventure.

I love the title she gave her tour.

Not a purpose tour. Not an achievement tour. Not a reinvention tour.

A curiosity tour.

There is an important difference.

Purpose Demands an Answer

Purpose is a large word.

It suggests destination. Commitment. Direction. Perhaps even obligation.

Ask someone:

What is your purpose for the next ten years?

and don't be surprised if they look slightly alarmed.

But ask:

What are you curious about?

and something different happens.

The question opens rather than closes.

I wonder what it would be like to paint. I wonder whether I could learn Italian. I wonder where that road goes. I wonder if I could write a book. I wonder what birds visit the garden each morning. I wonder how photography really works. I wonder whether I could play the piano again. I wonder what would happen if I volunteered there.

Curiosity doesn't demand that we know where we are going.

It merely asks us to take another look.

We Used to Be Very Good at This

Children are extraordinarily curious.

Why? Why not? What's that? Where does it go? What happens if I touch it? Why is the sky blue? Why can't dogs talk? Why do birds fly?

Then something happens.

We grow up.

Questions gradually become answers.

We acquire expertise. We become doctors, veterinarians, lawyers, teachers, engineers, professors, accountants and executives.

People begin coming to us for answers.

And professional success often depends upon having them.

There is nothing wrong with expertise.

But there may be an unintended consequence.

The more expert we become in one part of life, the easier it is to stop being a beginner in others.

Curiosity requires us occasionally to say three words that become surprisingly difficult with age:

I don't know.

Followed by three much more interesting ones:

Let's find out.

The Freedom to Be Useless

There is another reason curiosity belongs in the Third Act.

For much of adult life, we are trained to value usefulness.

Education must lead somewhere. Training must improve our career. Activities must produce results. Time must be productive. Even hobbies can become strangely competitive.

How far did you cycle? What's your golf handicap? How many followers does your photography page have? Have you published the book? Have you sold a painting?

What if none of that matters anymore?

What if I photograph a bird simply because I want to understand how the light falls across its feathers? What if I write because an idea interests me? What if I learn French badly? What if I paint pictures nobody will ever buy? What if I spend three hours reading about medieval history for absolutely no useful reason?

There is something wonderfully liberating about an activity that doesn't have to become anything else.

Curiosity does not require a business plan.

Ambition and Curiosity

For much of the Second Act, ambition is useful.

Ambition asks:

Where will this take me?

Will this qualification advance my career? Will this publication help my promotion? Will this appointment increase my influence? Will this project enhance my reputation?

Curiosity asks something completely different:

I wonder what is over there?

That may be one of the most significant transitions between the Second Act and the Third.

Ambition is often directed toward a destination.

Curiosity is attracted to the journey.

Ambition wants to know whether something will be worthwhile.

Curiosity wants to know what happens next.

Neither is inherently better.

But perhaps we spend enough of our lives being ambitious.

The Third Act gives us permission to wander.

Becoming a Beginner Again

One of the great opportunities of later life may be the chance to become a beginner.

That can be surprisingly uncomfortable.

Experts are accustomed to competence.

We know how to do things.

We have spent decades accumulating experience.

Then suddenly we pick up a paintbrush and discover we cannot paint.

We try a new language and sound ridiculous.

We take up an instrument and produce noises that even the dog finds distressing.

We try something new on a computer and need a twelve-year-old to explain it.

Wonderful!

Because the moment we become beginners, the world becomes large again.

There are things we don't know. Skills we haven't mastered. Questions we cannot answer. Possibilities we haven't considered.

Being a beginner isn't evidence that our abilities are declining.

Sometimes it is evidence that our world is still expanding.

Follow the Breadcrumbs

Perhaps curiosity works less like a roadmap and more like a trail of breadcrumbs.

One interest leads to another.

You start photographing birds. Photography makes you interested in light.

Birds make you interested in migration. Migration makes you interested in geography.

Geography makes you want to travel. Travel introduces you to conservation.

Conservation introduces you to people. Those people invite you somewhere you had never imagined going.

And one day you look back and realize:

None of this was planned.

That doesn't mean it was aimless.

It means the direction emerged through exploration.

We sometimes imagine that a meaningful life requires a carefully designed destination.

Perhaps meaning can also emerge by following things that repeatedly make us say:

That's interesting.

Curiosity & Flow

This brings us back to the previous blog in this four-part series.

Flow.

Flow occurs when we become deeply absorbed in something challenging and engaging - so absorbed that we may temporarily lose our awareness of time.

But how do we find those activities?

Curiosity may be the doorway.

Something catches our attention. We investigate. We try it. We aren't particularly good. We try again. Our skills improve. The challenge increases. Our concentration deepens. And eventually something rather lovely happens.

We look at the clock. Two hours have disappeared.

Curiosity led us to the door.

Flow invited us inside.

The Courage to Say Yes

There is another side to curiosity that becomes increasingly important with age.

Curiosity requires a willingness to say yes.

Would you like to try this? Yes.

Would you like to come with us? Why not?

Have you ever been there? No.

Would you like to learn? Certainly.

We accumulate very good reasons for saying no as we grow older.

It's inconvenient. I've never done that. I'm probably too old. I wouldn't be very good. I don't know anyone. It sounds difficult.

Perhaps.

But the Third Act becomes very small if every unfamiliar door remains closed.

We don't have to walk through all of them.

But surely, we should continue opening a few.

Maybe You Don't Need a Passion

We are also frequently told to find your passion.

That can be almost as intimidating as finding your purpose.

What if you don't have one? What if you have ten? What if something interests you for six months and then doesn't?

That's fine.

Curiosity is allowed to be temporary.

You can take a class and decide you don't like it. You can try painting and discover that pottery is more interesting. You can join something and leave. You can travel somewhere once. You can read twenty books about a subject and then move on.

Not every curiosity needs to become a passion. Not every interest needs to become an identity. Not every road needs to become a highway.

Sometimes it is enough to have taken the walk.

A Different Kind of Résumé

Imagine writing a résumé for the Third Act.

Not:

Professor. Dean. Director.

President. Consultant.

Instead:

Learned to paint. Photographed a bird I'd never seen before. Visited somewhere I couldn't pronounce. Made a new friend. Wrote something I was proud of. Tried something and failed spectacularly. Changed my mind about something important. Asked more questions. Laughed frequently. Stayed curious.

Perhaps that résumé tells us rather more about a life than we might expect.

The Next Door

The great advantage of curiosity is that it doesn't require us to know how the story ends.

That seems particularly appropriate for the Third Act.

In the first blog of this series, I suggested that Allison Aubrey's Third Turn and my Third Act are different metaphors describing much the same opportunity.

The story continues.

But we are free to change direction.

In the second, we considered flow - those wonderful periods when we become so absorbed in something that we forget to look at the clock.

Now curiosity gives us the mechanism for finding those experiences.

So perhaps we can stop worrying quite so much about discovering our grand purpose for later life.

Try a smaller question.

What interests me?

Then another:

What have I always wondered about?

And perhaps the most useful one of all:

What would happen if I tried?

You don't need to know where it will lead.

Just open the door.

Take a look.

Perhaps the Third Act doesn't begin when we discover our new purpose.

Perhaps it begins when we become curious enough to open the next door.

A Question for Readers

What is something you've always been curious about, but have never actually tried?

Perhaps now is the time.

Further Reading

Aubrey, Allison. Your Turn: How to Create a Midlife You Love. Avid Reader Press/Simon & Schuster, 2026.

Csikszentmihalyi, Mihaly. Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience. Harper & Row, 1990.

In This Series

Part 1: The Third Act and the Third Turn: When the Career Ends but the Story Doesn't.

Part 2: The Flow State: When You Forget to Look at the Clock.

Part 3: Curiosity: The Fuel for the Third Act.

Next

Part 4: Connection: Why the Third Act Shouldn't Be a Solo Performance.

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