For Those Who’ve Lost Their Curiosity

A little while back, I watched an online panel discussion with a celebrity I greatly admire (no names here, that’s not why I’m bringing this up). The event had been delayed for some unknown reason, so I was even more itchy for it to happen. I sat in front of my screen for an hour, so ready to hear about this person’s creative process, their take on current world events, the little bits of wisdom they’d amassed over the years. I wanted to know how being who they are had coloured their worldview. I longed to hear about connections they’d made to the universe, to other people.

And none of that really happened.

It’s not that this VIP didn’t have any of this important stuff to share. I’d heard and seen other pieces about them in the past, and they in those, they were downright delightful and fascinating. Quite frankly, this time, they just didn’t get asked about any of it. My disappointment didn’t sit with the interviewee at all, but with the interviewer. They had one of the most amazing minds of our time willing to share with them, waiting to dig a little deeper. Maybe it was nerves, maybe it an attempt to please their audience, but they asked vague, cookie-cutter questions, and got vague cookie-cutter answers in response. After an hour of watching, I didn’t know anything about this VIP that I couldn’t have gleaned from a 30-second glance of a Wikipedia page.

I had the obligatory “I could have done better” response, but then I got really worried. Maybe the interviewer just wasn’t really curious about all that stuff. Maybe the bulk of the audience wasn’t really curious either, and the interviewer knew it. Maybe what I saw in that potentially-monumental-but-actually-blah interview was a bite-sized appetizer in a bigger, more concerning problem.

I ask big questions for a living. I pick, I dig, I scrounge, and quite often, I annoy, but I’m not happy or satisfied until I’ve gotten to what’s beneath the surface. As a philosopher, a writer, and an educator, I’m not happy skimming along the surface. I’m curious about what’s behind what people say, how they act, they way they think. This curiosity is the compass with which I navigate the world. It keeps me from feeling like I’m adrift. It helps me feel like I’m still writing my own narrative, that I’m an informed, involved participant in society. It keeps me safe. Over the past two absurd, unimaginable years, it’s made me feel like I was still attached to the world.

I’m scared that what we’ve gone through recently has squeezed curiosity out of us, that we’re just trying to get by, and we’ve ceased to notice that there’s a universe worth of hidden ideas tucked away in it. I’m scared that we’re now too tired to search. Perhaps we’ve seen so much unthinkable awful that we just don’t want to tip over any more rocks, for fear that there will be more awful. Curiosity often yields the unexpected, and we’ve been given huge doses of the unexpected.

Regardless, I desperately want this feeling of belonging, this connection, for others. I think we all need it as we tiptoe (or tap dance) into this brave new world. What’s been blunted can be resharpened, and what’s put out can be reignited. We should all still want this back. There’s still room for curiosity and wonder, even in times of tumult. More importantly, we should all recognize that we need it. It will help us regain what’s been lost.

I can’t help but wish that the interview I watched had been conducted by a precocious, outspoken and relentlessly, unapologetically curious five-year-old. I think everyone watching could have used a reminder of the awesomeness that’s out there, just waiting to be found by someone persistent enough to ask about it. We’ll be relying on our children, the next generation, for support in the coming decades. They’ll be rebuilding, repairing, reimagining the world that seems so broken at the moment, and I hope against hope that they’ll be able to hang onto their childish mindset. For the time being, perhaps they’ll be kind enough to lend us their curiosity, the insatiable “why” that makes them so charming and so challenging, their courage in asking awkward, uncomfortable, unexpected questions that lead to so many marvelous adventures and discoveries.