April: Let’s Talk About Curiosity
In April, I realized the importance of curiosity. Given how frequently “definitively impossible” is reclassified as “presently unaffordable”, it is more important than ever to question the words you’ve accepted as truth, to challenge the concepts you’ve accepted as complete, to rebuke the practices of yesterday that don’t align with your present-day self.
The words you say and the ones you don’t are two halves of the same whole. We often mistake the loudest or most prevalent words as also being the most truthful or most important, but that is rarely the case. It is too often that we allow ourselves to be satisfied without considering the words unsaid. We meticulously look for lies of the tongue only to forget about lies of omission.
The power of an idea is not measured by its popularity or acceptance but instead by the depth of humanity captured in its contents. Comfort creates complacency, and when we spend too much time in our comfort zone we forget to be curious. We diminish our own potential. And we digress in our ability to connect—with others, with our own emotions, with the Universe. Complacency will cause you to believe that differences don’t matter. In return we raise kids, write legislature, and proliferate ideas as if equality and equity are one in the same. And when you look at the state of the world, it is easy to see that complacency is literally killing us.
Herein lies the value of curiosity. Whereas complacency makes you rigid and stagnant, curiosity opens you to move with the flow of life. Recently I was triggered by a scene in a TV show that my five year old son was watching where a mother embarrassingly apologized for her daughter’s behavior: “Oh Jane—she’s just a kid who still believes she can change the world.” How old is too old to believe that the world can be better? How old is too old to still believe you could be the one to make it so? How old is too old to still believe that the world is more wondrous than you’ve presently experienced?
Curiosity is the least-painful, least-daunting way to escape the box that identity puts you in. Little kids wake up every day expecting to find wonder behind every door, beneath every leaf. With impossible things like AI and VisionPros and self-driving cars become more and more commonplace, why is it so hard to believe there is still magic to be found even in the most mundane aspects of life?
Consider gender. The words we say are that gender is a simple declaration of a body’s reproductive organs, but that’s not a true reflection of the world we live in. Gender is a list of rules and requirements and expectations and customs; some are rarely stated directly while others are printed on government documents. These are the words we don’t say — that even in the most civilized and sanctified places many people are more willing to kill your curiosity than to rattle their complacency, more willing to end your life than to consider changing their own.
Before you label someone else’s situation as irrelevant, acknowledge that the spectrum of human emotions is shared by everyone; while you might not experience the same triggers, you are susceptible to experience the same emotional responses. Before you condemn the decisions of another, consider the words that would convince you to do what they’ve done. Before you dismiss or discredit someone else’s perspective, at least be curious enough to consider that they know something meaningful that you have missed. Your ability to connect with a person or to an issue is a reflection of your willingness to be curious and vulnerable. Commit to curiosity, or risk having complacency rob you of life’s wonder.