Invaluable Curiosity

"Always be on the look out for the presence of wonder." E.B. White

Tove Jansson, best known for creating the Moomins, wrote, “It is simply this: do not tire, never lose interest, never grow indifferent—lose your invaluable curiosity and you let yourself die. It's as simple as that.”Hers was a world built of curiosity, and navigating her way through it by way of different forms of expression: she wrote, she drew, and she painted. As she once told The New Yorker, “home was continuous with studio, at night filled with music and creative friends.”

She was born into a family where her father was an artist and her mother was an illustrator. Exploration and creativity, imagination and self-expression were a way of life. By the time of her death, Jansson had produced paintings, greeting cards, painted murals, illustrated books (like The Hobbit and Alice in Wonderland), created librettos, written books for adults and children, and produced a comic strip. She would go on to win the Hans Christian Andersen Medal in 1966.

At the root of all her work is this underlying and ever-driving curiosity. Her life was lived in such a way that exemplified this. Because she is one of my creative heroes and her Moomins books have deeply shaped my own writing for children, I began to wonder how does one continue to nurture and retain one’s “invaluable curiosity?”

From childhood, I have been an extremely curious person. I was always asking questions, reading books, drawing, imagining, daydreaming, and creating. It was my safety net, my North Star, my life raft, and my form of survival. Having grown up in a turbulent home and often feeling lonely, I escaped into my own imagined worlds. Reading about Tove Jansson’s life, I discovered she did, too. During WWII, she said,“When I was feeling depressed and scared of the bombing and wanted to get away from my gloomy thoughts to something else entirely. . . . I crept into an unbelievable world where everything was natural and benign—and possible.” I find myself doing this, too, a lot these days.

The world feels unhinged. It is filled with a darkness and hatred that is very reminiscent of the time Jansson began the Moomins books. I began my children’s story during the Pandemic. It was a world that was centered on family and community. Now, as the world feels on the brink of disaster, I have returned to this woodland world because it feels safe and kindly. It’s also a way of expressing my curiosity.

I teach first grade. Once a week, I have a part of my class that’s called “I Wonder…” It’s where I choose one student who has a question about something. It can be about anything: the universe, the ocean, sports, nature. I let one child ask their I wonder question and then open it up to allow other students to offer what they think the answer to the question. Last, we look up the answer. There have been questions like “Why does Venus rotate backwards?” “How are skyscrapers built?” “How do sea turtles hatch?” “How can birds sit on power lines?” “When were numbers invented?” “How big is the universe?”

My classroom is a safe place that allows for curiosity, wonder and questions - even when we don’t know the answers to them.

Wherever I go, I carry a small notebook to jot down ideas, conversations, thoughts, feelings, things that I see and experience. It’s my way of processing the world. Jansson was the same way. She once said, “I need to write down my observations. Even the tiniest ones; they're the most important.” Writing is a way of stopping to listen to that inner voice inside myself. It’s the one that works out the problems of this world into the woodland world of my stories. Yet, unlike this one, my created world is gentler and kinder. It is how I would like to see the world.

Like Jansson in her Moomins books, I also try to explore serious themes and tones in a way that ends with hope and inclusion, in acceptance and compassion. I am not a fast writer. I am slowly working through words and thoughts and feelings to find the exact and precise expression for what I want to say. Tove Jansson said in an interview, “I rewrote a new version; there are four, five, six versions of the same thing. The meaning of words became so important to me.” I go through numerous drafts and rewrites to simplify the writing and make the meanings more complex as they deal with connections. Nothing must be superfluous. It takes meticulous honing.

Curiosity drives all this. I am endlessly reading, exploring, and still asking questions. I am fascinated by science and philosophy and art and film and music and poetry. I find myself continually asking questions that are far deeper, richer and meaningful than receiving mere quick answers. Life is complex and this does not make me fearful, but find comfort in that. It means there is so much more to explore than I could begin to imagine.

Curiosity lies at the very heart of creativity.

Curiosity requires action, requires work, requires one seeking after, pursuing, having a passion for the question. All art springs from curiosity. Art is to question, to reflect, to be in the present moment to attempt at capturing an idea, a feeling, or a way of being. Curiosity is a choice. Curiosity is a pathway, a road, a route that one takes day after day.