A college classmate of mine had an older brother who was very accomplished and quite famous. I will leave his name out of it. I went to his house once, back when the phone at home was still a landline. He told me, “I'm talking to you today, so I'm not taking any calls.” Sure enough, whenever the phone rang, he left it ringing. I asked him how he could do that. Remember, it was a landline. He had no idea who was calling, and he still left it ringing. I told him I would never be able to resist. He said something important to me then: “Managing your curiosity is a skill.” The more I thought about it, the more sense it made.
Another story impressed me even more. A woman I was friends with, as opposed to someone I was dating, told me something that made me deeply respect her. Her husband had been having an affair. Someone handed her a packet of letters between him and the other woman. She said, “I'm not going to read them. I know he cheated, and getting divorced takes care of that. If I read these letters, I'll learn all sorts of details that will torment me for the rest of my life. I'm not reading them.” Put yourself in her shoes. Would we have the composure to say, “I'm not reading them”?
Via Dedao, Luo Pang's Curiosity Club, episode 4