God Needs His Elvanse
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The title of this article is either the best thing I have ever written or the thing most likely to get me quietly removed from several professional mailing lists.
Either way, here we are.
The older I get, the more I find myself wondering whether society has fundamentally misunderstood curiosity. We celebrate it enthusiastically in hindsight, but often struggle with it in real time. We admire explorers, inventors, reformers, writers and visionaries, yet we become surprisingly uncomfortable around people who ask too many questions, challenge assumptions, wander off topic or disappear down intellectual rabbit holes that do not appear immediately useful. As somebody with AuDHD, I have spent much of my life doing exactly that.
A few years ago I found myself researching Roman funerary inscriptions late into the evening after what had started as a question about governance. Somewhere between inheritance law, social status and memorial practices, I realised I had completely forgotten the original question. To me, however, it all felt connected. That is the thing about curiosity. It rarely travels in straight lines. It wanders through side streets, follows loose threads and insists on opening doors that sensible people would probably leave closed.
The more I think about it, the more I wonder whether many of the people who shaped human history would have appeared rather inconvenient while they were alive. The person who refuses to stop asking questions is difficult until they are right. The person who becomes obsessed with an idea is eccentric until the idea works. The person who sees connections nobody else can see is unrealistic until everybody else catches up. History has a curious habit of renaming traits once they become successful.
Perhaps that is why I have always been drawn to systems. Most people take words literally. I take systems literally. I am fascinated by the gap between what something claims to be and what it actually is. It is why I enjoy governance. People often assume governance is about rules. I have always thought it was about questions. The best governance professionals I know remain curious long after everyone else has accepted the first explanation.
Which brings me, somewhat improbably, to God.
Not because I am particularly religious. I am largely agnostic, although probably in a way that would frustrate both committed atheists and committed theologians. What I do know is that if there is a creator responsible for all of this, they appear to have demonstrated an extraordinary enthusiasm for complexity. After all, this is a universe containing black holes, octopuses, mathematics, consciousness, tree climbing goats, quantum mechanics and human beings who willingly attend meetings that could have been emails.
It is difficult to look at creation and conclude that its architect lacked imagination. The universe often feels less like a carefully managed project and more like the result of somebody repeatedly asking, “What would happen if we tried this?” It has the energy of a mind that finds possibilities too interesting to ignore.
When I started taking Elvanse, people occasionally asked whether I worried it would make me less creative, less curious or somehow less myself. My experience was almost the opposite. The curiosity remained. The ideas remained. The desire to understand things remained. What changed was my ability to choose which thoughts deserved my attention. The orchestra was still playing. Somebody had simply found the conductor.
Looking back, I am not sure any of the things that matter most in my life arrived through certainty. My career did not. My writing did not. My studies did not. Most of the people I value most did not. They all arrived because I followed a question a little further than was sensible, pulled on a thread that seemed interesting or wandered into a conversation that I had no particular reason to join. Curiosity has caused me problems. It has also built my life.
Which is why, despite the title, this article was never really about God. It was about curiosity. About the strange human instinct to keep exploring even when we do not know where the path leads. About the people who ask one more question than is strictly necessary. About the minds that cannot help wondering whether there might be another explanation, another possibility or another chapter waiting just beyond the edge of what we currently understand.
And if there is one thing I have learned from governance, history, neurodiversity and life in general, it is that the most interesting discoveries are rarely made by the people who are certain they already have the answer. They are usually made by the people who are still curious enough to keep looking.
