The Link Between Mortality and Curiosity?

[VanimaEdhel]

The elves are immortal. Therefore, they have all the time they could want to try out new things. Perhaps they seem to avoid change to humans, but humans don't live anywhere near as long to see that the elves have changed things from the way they were before, and may still change something from the way it is now. Besides, to echo a sentiment from before, why bother change something if you already know it works?

I agree with this sentiment: when Elves are young (relatively speaking), it is quite possible that they could be quite curious. If you also look at the character of Legolas, he was quite curious. He wanted to explore Fangorn forest and he became eventually quite enamored with the caves that Gimli wished to explore, which probably caused him to be even more curious about the race of Dwarves.

He seemed to me to be like a young boy almost, who was always looking around on the quest (when Gimli and Aragorn were following Merry and Pippin), always being awake and alert, looking around, when the other two were sleeping.

Also, he was greatly curious about the sea, as are most Elves like Legolas. His curiosity is probably what carried him over the sea with Gimli eventually. They had explored much of Middle Earth (where they desired to) together, so they both probably wanted to explore more, so Legolas, being much in love with the sea, obviously would have wanted to explore over there.

So, basically, I guess, because they live so long, after seeing much of the world, and seeing much sorrow, obviously, the Elves probably lose curiosity in many things. They have forever to experience things, so they truly can say, "I always have tomorrow", whereas mortals, when they begin to age, may not be around tomorrow, so they had to experiment and investigate and invent and create during their lifetime, so that they would be able to experience life themselves before they died. If one were to see all the things that Elves tried or did during their eternity, it would probably eventually sum up to the same amount of things that Men did in their lifetime, it is just that Elves could do one new thing a century, even, easily, but Men never even made it to a second century of living.