September 25, 2025
Life is full of mysteries, both big and small. Some of them have obvious answers if you dig a little deeper, like why the cat prefers to wind sprints at 3 am instead of at 3 pm. Others, though, feel more like riddles with no clear solution. The Doctor’s line from Doctor Who, “There’s something that doesn’t make sense. Let’s go poke it with a stick.”, isn’t just a cheeky bit of dialogue. It’s an entire philosophy of living.
We’re taught that not knowing is a problem. School drills it into us early: there’s a right answer, a wrong answer, and the goal is always to get the right one. But life rarely works that way. Most of the time, it’s a muddle of half-truths, contradictions, and mysteries we’ll never solve. The trick isn’t to pretend those don’t exist. The trick is to lean into them, poke at them, and see what happens.
Curiosity is the Engine
Think about the last time you encountered something that didn’t make sense. Did you stop and investigate? Or did you brush it off and keep moving? Kids, of course, don’t brush things off. They tug at every thread. My own kids ask questions that leave me scrambling for answers: Why is the sky blue? Why can’t we see time? Why do we even have belly buttons? They don’t accept “because” as an answer, either. They poke until something gives.
That’s the spirit the Doctor was pointing to: curiosity as the engine of discovery. It’s not about solving every problem, it’s about refusing to let the strange, the unexplained, or the confusing pass by unnoticed.
Poking Is How We Learn
Sometimes poking at nonsense has real consequences. A scientist poking at why apples fall from trees ends up redefining physics. An inventor poking at why light behaves strangely ends up creating breakthroughs in technology. Even in everyday life, poking matters. We notice a weird sound in the car, investigate, and discover a problem before it becomes a disaster.
Of course, not all poking leads to life-altering revelations. Sometimes it just leads to a better story to tell over dinner. But either way, it beats sitting quietly while the mysteries of life pass us by.
Humor in the Unknown
One of the things I love about this Thought of the Day is how playful it is. “Poking with a stick” doesn’t sound like a scientific endeavor, it sounds like kids in a backyard testing out whether that pile of leaves is just leaves or hiding a raccoon. There’s humor built into the idea of prodding the unknown.
And maybe that’s the point. If we can laugh at the unknown, it becomes less scary. When life doesn’t make sense, we can choose to stress about it, or we can choose to grab a metaphorical stick and give it a nudge.
A Challenge for Today
So here’s my challenge: find one thing in your day that doesn’t make sense. Maybe it’s a confusing work process, a strange comment someone makes, or just a thought you can’t shake. Instead of ignoring it, poke at it. Ask one more question. Dig a little deeper. See if you uncover something worth knowing, or at least worth laughing about.
Life is too short to walk past its mysteries. Go poke at them.
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