To lose our curiosity is to lose something fundamental about who we are and the journey that got us here. Curiosity about scientific and technological matters is widely embraced as something good and beneficial, but what about curiosity focused on humanity and the human condition? I am troubled by signs that we are becoming curious about everything else except how to be more fulfilled, content, happy, united, and peaceful—as human beings. I am especially troubled by a collective retreat away from embracing our diversity toward a sort of ethno-provincialism.
To be incurious about human diversity, whether based on skin color, culture, gender identity and expressions, national places of birth, and so much else—is to shun humanity and build walls demarcating who matters and who doesn’t. And I say ‘to shun humanity’ because I live by the creed of “made in His image and likeness” and I don’t believe that exceptions were made.
On the other hand, curiosity about differences reflects a love of one’s kind that is universal and borderless. It extends to people the courtesy to be known beyond their phenotype, culture, and gender identity without the need to minimize those attributes. It opens the door to learning about perspectives, experiences, and elements of character that attract the heart. Concerted curiosity reveals that outer differences can cover over what is truly meaningful about our humanity—only to the point that we allow them to.
Unfortunately, we are seeing more examples of people comfortably maligning social differences. These practices reflect a commitment to misunderstand people as well as a deep-seated belief that there is a group of people who serve as a shining example for all of us “others” to emulate. Sometimes these dynamics are obvious and sometimes they are subtle.
This theme of curiosity is a current in my own life and one of my humbling moments was serving as a graduate research assistant for a professor working on a study involving transgender interview respondents. Before hearing several recountings of transgender lived experiences, my incurious belief was that these individuals chose to express themselves through cross-dressing and other ways as a relatively superficial way of expressing their sexuality. After listening to several recordings, I was very surprised to make note of distinct and repeated early childhood patterns that reflected a common inner drive to break out of a body and a socialization context that felt foreign to how they felt on the inside. The stark differences between the experiences of transwomen and transmen will also stick with me. My primary takeaway was the sense that you don’t have to fully understand a group of people or their choices to feel that they have every right to live out their lives and pursue their happiness without any heavy-handed obstructions or petty impediments.
I share that to acknowledge that almost all of us have room to grow in our curiosity and we will almost always be richly rewarded if we are genuinely open enough to listen to those different from us and to grow from what we have heard. A commitment to human curiosity is akin to love for humanity, a love that doesn’t seek to uproot differences, but to place them in a proper context in light of the prevailing sense that we are whole and made better by living out our wholeness. And from this foundational understanding, our differences, however superficial or significant they may be, can be embraced and appreciated as elements of our humanity that free us from monotony and boredom.
Curiosity can be a powerfully constructive force. Fortune100 companies and the most impactful nonprofits are aware of this. Surely, a curious posture is a winning posture when success is staked on the ability of teams to not only cooperate with one another but to pull together completely through the inevitable storms. Here, there is no time to ‘team-build,’ the team must be built, united, mission-focused, and ready to meet the challenge. Building cultures of curiosity is essential to fast-tracking your teams to active and enthusiastic collaboration.
Curiosity becomes a constructive force when it is a common element in our everyday conversations and serves as a foundational element in the relationships we build. Curiosity flourishes in communication patterns governed by mutual respect and openness. Curiosity opens the portals to greater awareness of common experiences and sentiments that allow us to see the real person behind the social masks that have been fabricated and imposed by a troubled world. As momentum continues to build, curiosity becomes an environmental element that is ever-present, ready to seize opportunities to overcome inevitable tensions and disagreements and bring people closer to a common understanding and a tighter camaraderie.
Surely, curiosity is good for heart and soul, intellect and mind, organizational success and social advancement.