(art by Gerda Muller)
Recently on social media, I posed the question, “What is a childlike characteristic that you think should be retained into adulthood?” The answers varied from “Living in the present moment” to “Always asking questions” or “A sense of play and playfulness.” Yet the overwhelming answer was, “Curiosity.” (Followed closely by “Wonder.”).
There’s a little boy in my kindergarten class who is very quiet and quite curious. He is endlessly fascinated by space and came in already knowing all of his planets and the order they were from the sun. Lately, at recess, instead of playing with the other kids on the playground, he wants to come and sit with me on the bench. When I asked him, “Don’t you want to go and play with your friends?” he replied, “No. I want to sit and talk with you.” So I asked, “Why do you want to talk to me?” He answered, “I like talking to you. You let me ask questions.”
I was a lot like him when I was a child.
I was born with an innate and natural sense of curiosity - with “Why?” already formed on my lips. For as long as I can remember, the world has been a wonder to me. My eyes sparkled in awe and amazement at the mystery of the most ordinary things. I was full of questions and the desire to understand what seemed so magical - all of the marvels about me, especially the woods I loved to explore. Yet what I most often found from adults was an irritation with my questions; whether it be in school or Sunday school. My questions were unwelcome. They were dismissed and discouraged. I even think my exasperated parents even spent money they didn’t really have to buy a set of World Book Encylopedias so they could reply to my questions with, “Look it up.”
And I did.
All the time.
I would take one down from the shelf to look up one answer, which would spark another question that I would look up and it would be hours before I looked up from the pages. Usually it was my Mother telling me to go outside and play, that it was too nice of a day to be inside.
I read encyclopedias and dictionaries, studied atlases, and was fascinated by books about unusual facts. I learned far more on my own than I ever did in school. I would take field guides with me to the woods to learn the names of plants, trees, snakes, birds, fungi, and animals. I was insatiable because what I discovered was that when I learned one new thing it would reveal something else that I didn’t. The world and the universe was much bigger than I had ever imagined. And this thrilled me. It still does.
It’s why now, as a teacher, I encourage questions and do my best to answer them or, if I don’t know, say, “Let’s find out.”
Carl Sagan in his book The Demon-Haunted World speaks of his interactions with kindergartners and first graders, “Many of these children are natural-born scientists — although heavy on the wonder side and light on the skepticism. They’re curious, intellectually vigorous. Provocative and insightful questions bubble out of them.” He lamented how, by the time one is in high school, this curiosity is gone.
Why do so many become indifferent? What happens to that effervescent wonder so many once had?
As children everything was filled with mystery and that mystery created wonder. That wonder is what caused us to ask, “Why?” It was a holy longing for understanding. The little boy in my class is fascinated by space so I am constantly looking up facts about the universe to share with him. Since he was curious about the Great Red Spot of Jupiter, I researched to learn more about it myself. When I told him that the Great Red Spot was large enough to engulf the Earth, his eyes grew bigger. “But it won’t, right?” he asked. “No. It won’t. That’s just to compare how big the spot is to our planet. To give us perspective,” I answered and he repeated, “Perspective. What’s that?” So I explained what perspective was.
Tove Jansson, best known for creating the Moomins, once wrote, “It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent - lose your curiosity and you let yourself die. It’s as simple as that.”
I’ve noticed this in my own Father. After the loss of his marriage, the death of his older sister (who was like a mother to him) and the death of his ex-wife, he gave up. Depressed, he shut down and lost all interest in the world. Both the sadness and loneliness sped up his mental decline. Nothing fascinated or interested him anymore. Not even the things he once enjoyed doing, like golf or travel. In the hopes of sparking some curiosity in him, I often share interesting facts I have picked up. One day we were driving to the grocery store and the sky was full of cumulous clouds. “Did you know,” I began, “that a cumulous cloud weighs as much as a jet?” My Father replied only with, “Why would you even know that?” Another time, I shared a fact about the universe that I learned to share with the little boy from my class, “Did you know that 95% of the universe is invisible?” He looked at me askew. “I don’t believe that. How would anyone know that?” Like many these days, he distrusts science. Then he added, “You always were an odd child.” An odd child who grew up into an odd adult, but I’ve embraced this because it was born out of curiosity and wonder.
Curiosity has always been a compass for me. A way to guide myself through life in a deep appreciation and gratitude for the enormity and poetry and beauty of it all. Curiosity invites us to step outside of ourselves, to move beyond our assumptions and beliefs to see the world differently, to see the world anew. Curiosity is rooted in what we are and the why we are.
I don’t want to become leaden and uncurious like my Father. I agree with Albert Einstein when he wrote in an article entitled Never Lose a Holy Curiosity, “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existence. One cannot help but be in awe when he contemplates the mysteries of the eternity, of life, of the marvelous structure of reality. It is enough if one tries merely to comprehend a little of the mystery each day.”
I love that Einstein called it a “holy curiosity” because I believe curiosity and wonder are spiritual acts. They require of us to let go of our assumptions, our ready answers, our dogmas, and rigid beliefs. It requires us to ask and see the world anew, and it leaves us different than we were before.
While curiosity is something I believe each of us is born with, we must, as we grow older, continue to cultivate it. This means stepping out of our normal routine, being open to the unexpected, embracing the risk of asking a question, of admitting that one doesn’t know, of finding pleasure in the discovery, in the exuberance and vividness of life. Curiosity requires of us. It asks of us. Yet it also offers us the wondrous magnitude of the vastness of a small, three letter word, “Why?” How can such a tiny word lead us into such grandeur and grace, into such mystery and majesty? It’s the reason I will never, ever stop asking, “Why?”
Every atom of my curious being resonates with this, thank you!!! And I'm aware of grief too, at the ways many of us have hidden and deformed ourselves so that our wonder, joy and curiosity isn't "too much" for others...
I was really struck by this sentence in the Einstein quote: "Curiosity has its own reason for existence." It's like, curiosity doesn't have to lead to certain answers or destinations; curiosity is the journey, and it's valuable for its own sake. I think about this a lot as I age -- I just turned 60, and like you, I don't want to get to that point of being so jaded or complacent that I'm no longer curious.
I also love how you said curiosity asks of us but it also gives to us. And isn't that true of anything worthwhile? It doesn't have to be a task or a demand -- even just giving ourselves over to it can be answering that call.