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I believe it is important to understand curiosity and how it can benefit our lives.

As children, we often exhausted the adults around us with boundless curiosity.

We may remember asking why again and again in rounds of Q&A with parents. It didn’t take too many rounds to get to that chewy center that represented the limits of what parents could explain.

Because curiosity is already abundant in children, and perhaps lacking better information about how to channel that creativity, it often didn’t get encouraged or developed. This is just one of the ways that the curiosity of play can get groomed out of a young person as they mature.

It is also useful to notice circumstances where curiosity is crowded out, silenced, or absent. Strong emotions like anger or disgust commonly do not include curiosity. Sensing either physical or emotional pain is another circumstance that rarely leaves someone open to exploration of curiosity. Boredom and depression are low energy states where someone can feel there is no point or purpose to bringing in curiosity.

What makes all of this awareness useful is akin to appreciating the negative space in visual arts. It can help us think beyond the obviousness of our circumstance. Consider a tense situation of violence and what steps are necessary to de-escalate. Hostage negotiations will include some room for imagining a solution and invite the curiosity to achieve that solution.

It can also be useful to consider the boundaries of curiosity. This provides us with a more complete picture of how we interact with curiosity and what curiosity can do for us. Whether you are an artist engaged in a creative act or not, where does curiosity end? Where does it fade into the background? What makes curiosity fall off the cliff? Is curiosity sustainable over long periods?

There is an old saying that starts out with: “Curiosity killed the cat.” Most of my life, I thought that was the whole saying. Usually, it was heard in the context of adults trying to quell the naturally abundant exploration of curiosity by children. The subtext was clearly saying that curiosity is not worth the risk. The full saying goes: “Curiosity killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.” The full saying suggests there is a deeper reward.

In my life, as I have studied my reactivity, I have found rewards and benefits from inviting curiosity into some rather unlikely places. I will describe three of these instances including songwriting, anger, and pain.

Starting with the creative and artistic act of songwriting, I noticed that I am not a perfectionist. I have a deep love of music and grew up listening to, trying to decode messages from, and learning life lessons from popular music. So, my curiosity brought me into songwriting initially. But I found as soon as I had the semblance of a verse and a chorus the thrill of bringing that out of my being was cause for celebration. It took me many years and many songs before I was able to get more honest with myself. Why wasn’t I more curious after the first draft was written? Was I expressing my authentic self?

As I allowed for deeper listening and patience and honesty, I found myself saying things like, no, that chorus didn’t work. Why was I using that word? What did I really want to say? What would be deeply satisfying from my authentic source? This allowing in turn took me down a path that improved my message and my music.

In my coaching work, I felt compelled to understand why I was getting angry at times. I created a course designed to explore anger and presented this as a workshop. Through this course, it became clear that anger crowded out people’s ability to access curiosity. One day after a big rainstorm, I noticed the beginning of a leak in my living room window. I made a call to a contractor to explore costs and quickly discovered I was out of my depth when it came to the subject of how houses are built and repaired. My anger started to boil over when I interpreted the information coming through the phone call. Then because of the anger workshop a novel thought occurred to me.

Just like the movies and TV shows when someone goes to jail, I had always heard that they get one free call they can make. I thought if I treated my anger in the same way and if I was allowed one question to act as a lifeline to climb up out of my anger, what would be the best question I could ask? This shifted my thinking and changed the conversation with the contractor. I noticed that I could focus on what information I needed to make the best decision possible rather than stewing in my anger or feeling victimized. This showed me that even just a little curiosity can bring a powerful change. And guess what? You can make as many phone calls as you like to assuage anger.

The third unexpected and powerful area where I learned to bring curiosity is around pain. I had been doing a regular stretching practice and was walking regularly. One day after a walk, I noticed some real pain in my back and leg. It was sciatica, and after a few weeks, it was not improving. I started down the normal path of x-rays and tests and physical therapy. Many healing modalities provided some relief but not enough and I felt demoralized and depressed.

I kept looking and researching and finally came upon some mind-body guided meditations that brought me to learn about a pain support group. Many of those meditations helped me get curious about whether the fear of the pain and anticipation of the pain were making the pain worse. Even deeper, those meditations taught me to stay curious about what my body was telling me through the sensations of pain. Staying curious in the midst of pain was transformative and even mystical.

I believe that we can come to view our curiosity as a superpower. I think we need to unlearn thinking about curiosity in the same we think of a nosy neighbor. Instead, we could think of curiosity as a skill and a muscle that we can strengthen. If not used, curiosity can atrophy.

Curiosity can be practiced in simple ways. If you are already journaling, consider writing down at least one question that you have in your mind. If you have a gratitude journal, add your question there.

Curiosity may bring us discomfort as well. We will likely not be able to answer everything that our minds are curious about. The greatest minds in the arts and sciences are aware that there is more that we don’t know than we do. Sitting with the discomfort of not knowing is also a valid aspect of freedom and acceptance.

I will end with a note of encouragement. In my podcast, “Creative Engagement,” I call myself the Chief Encouragement Officer. Curiosity is a belief and hope that an answer is possible. It is not giving up. Just because a solution hasn’t been reached yet is evidence that we need to keep asking and imagine what could possibly allow us to find a solution.

I challenge myself and I challenge you to consider what you are curious about and then go and have that adventure of satisfying your wonderful curiosity.

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