A quest, as defined in the Australian Pocket Oxford Dictionary, is an “inquiry” or “search”. It also has an obvious connection to the phrase, ‘to question’, which has a slight overtone of ‘seeking the truth’.
I consider myself quite an inquisitive person – in fact sometimes annoyingly so, according to my friends and, heaven forbid, even my own family! I also enjoy discovering new things, or even ‘re-discovering’ just common-day events/items but from a totally new perspective. As a friend once said to me, our minds should aspire “to soar on wings like eagles”!
To me, this seems such an innate ability in all of us, a skill which we somehow seem to lose as we mature in age. Children seem to have a natural desire and curiosity to discover, and to question; however, as they grow older, wiser, acquire knowledge (through education) and become more worldly (through interactions with others), many seem to lose the knack or the interest to seek answers and take things more or less for granted. I feel that to a certain extent, one of the so-called mission in life is to seek: searching for information, for friends, and unknown territories, etc. After all, the very internet that we are using now was born of that necessity, wasn’t it?