Curiosity is Connection #CIC
What a strange phrase! Does it make you curious about what I mean?
Maybe it is pretty straightforward? If you are curious about something, you want to know more about it. If you are curious about someone, you want to know more about that person.
There’s a great scene in the first season of Ted Lasso where he misattributes the phrase “Be curious, not judgmental” to Walt Whitman. Apparently, Whitman never wrote it or said it. But the point, as Ted Lasso explains, is that if you’re curious you’ll ask questions and get toward understanding. If you’re not, you’ll assume you know all you need to know and just be judgmental. Coach Lasso said that is why people always underestimated him. They never took the time to ask questions or get to know him. What might they have learned if they were curious?
Does this strange emotion draw us toward whatever subject captures our curiosity? Does it cause us to connect? Or to want to?
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What would that even mean? What does it mean to connect? We can recognize connections between ourselves and others or between others and others. Ya know, connecting the dots.
We can try/need to connect with others. What do we mean when we say something like that? That we need to share the same physical space-time? That we need to align some goals together? That we need to correspond with one another? That we need to forge a mutual understanding? Could it be different in every context? Is that why there is such complexity?
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Or is it deeper? Cellular? I have mirror neurons and so do you. They enable us to mirror each other and our mental states. Our nervous systems can sync up our heartbeats and blood pressure. Maybe that is the only thing that can cause us to have empathy? To feel connected to one another?
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Or is it deeper? Molecular? I am water, proteins, sugars, fats, and minerals, and so is everything I eat. Maybe curiosity is the only thing that can cause us to see our interconnection and interdependence?
To be curious is to be able to see. To be able to see requires you to look. If you look, will you see how our curiosity is connection?