The wonders of curiosity, and its many uses
Adults can learn from children's curiosity. Embracing curiosity allows for openness, flexibility, and a sense of wonder in daily life, fostering better understanding and conflict resolution.
I was exiting a school after conducting a workshop for parents the other day when I saw a bunch of five-year-olds also leaving the building. It began to rain and I unfurled my umbrella. As it bloomed against the grey skies, one of them, walking alongside his mother, exclaimed joyfully, “Wow.” He too then wanted to explore opening and closing the foldable umbrella multiple times.
This fleeting episode made me wonder whether we, as adults, lose touch with our sense of curiosity. Adulting is hard, and often life presents us with situations that are challenging, so we try and find certitude, become more definitive about people, situations, beliefs and even our own ways of living. We start believing that since there is so much uncertainty to life, our fixed beliefs, and being decisive about things can safeguard us from the curveballs that life can throw at us. In the bargain, we lose our capacity for curiosity. No wonder, when we see an adult who is curious, we often see the quality or trait as being ‘childlike.’
The older I grow I believe that there is merit in tapping into the curiosity that all of us have the potential for. This quality allows us to be open to life, people and explore what’s happening around with a sense of wonder and awe. There is a certain lightness we can feel in ourselves when we begin to make space for it in our daily life. Curiosity at its core is about trying to know more about something, a new lens with which to explore an idea or people’s behaviours. What it requires is openness, an acceptance that we don’t know enough, a readiness to look at people and events from a perspective that is different from ours, a genuine interest in how things work and an emotional investment which allows us to be fully present as we try to think and feel differently about an idea that fascinates us. I remember a forty-five-year-old client of mine in therapy telling me how he feels jealous of those who can still be curious. He felt that he had become jaded with life where not too many things surprised him and as a result, he struggled to experience a sense of wonder about life and how it unfolded.
We all need to mindfully ask ourselves how we can build capacity for curiosity in our day-to-day life. This requires an investment, and it involves spending time and emotional energy in trying to understand something. I love spending time with toddlers and children because unknowingly they ask and say things that are so filled with inquisitiveness and a desire to know more. When we find ourselves hurt or struggling to make sense of something that was said to us, curiosity can help us open a dialogue and listen to perspectives that we can’t imagine or haven’t thought of. My experience is that it often allows for conflicts and misunderstanding to be dealt with not just at a faster pace, but also without resentment building up. The more fixed ideas we form of other people, the more rigid we become in our beliefs and perspectives. As a result, we are less likely to be open, curious and flexible when it comes to hearing stories from a different lens. Begin by asking yourself what inspires curiosity in you. Follow it up with imagining how your life would be different when you make space for curiosity.
As Brene Brown says in her book, Atlas of the Heart, “Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty.” As adults, finding new ways to look at uncertainty is also curiosity and we need to remember that.
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