Curiosity: A blessing or a curse?
Curiosity: blessing or curse? Is it a desire for knowledge or an answer to what’s around the next corner? Does it describe a person’s oddball eccentricities? Or is it a tempting path that may lead us to places where we’d be wiser not to venture — that same curiosity that led to the cat’s demise?
Despite some obvious validity to the cautionary slant, curious minds are frequent catalysts for insights, innovation, and exploration.
The VIA Institute on Character identifies curiosity among the 24-character strengths, or positive traits, that benefit us and others. The organization cites curiosity as, “one of the 5 strengths most reliably linked to satisfaction with life. Curiosity is also associated with happiness, health, longevity, and positive social relationships.”
How we apply those strengths, or best aspects of our personality, is part of what helps us thrive.
More than merely helping us scratch a personal inquisitive itch, neuroscience research supports that being curious about a topic makes it easier for us to learn and retain new information. One study found, “…participants showed improved memory for information that they were curious about and for incidental material learned during states of high curiosity.”
We can also put our curious nature to good use to create personal behavior change. In his Ted Talk, “A simple way to break a bad habit,” psychiatrist and mindfulness expert Judson Brewer, MD, Ph.D., explains how choosing to be curiously aware of our emotions, senses, and cravings can support us as we seek to break bad habits.
On a social level, curiosity, like gratitude and forgiveness, is a resource we can apply to improve our relationships with others and to the world at large. Leveraging curiosity, we can avoid jumping to conclusions about people or ideas based upon superficial information or our preconceived notions.
In “A More Beautiful Question: the Power of Inquiry to Spark Breakthrough Ideas,” author Warren Berger describes how American Playwright Lynn Nottage leveraged curiosity to help her listen to, and become less judgmental of, people whose backgrounds were vastly different from hers. She then used those experiences and insights when she developed the play, Sweat. Nottage is notably the only woman to have twice won a Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Most of us can appreciate what it is like when another person shows genuine interest and inquiry about us ― our experiences, thoughts, and ideas. Authentic curiosity, as opposed to veiled nosiness or idle interest, can signal respect that can open doors to deeper conversations.
If being curious is so powerful, why don’t we take advantage of opportunities to cultivate it more often, or even shy away from it at times? Constraints on our time and psychic energy, social conditioning, peer pressures, or indifference, can all favor mental apathy. Fear of the unknown can squelch interest in the horizons to which our curiosity can lead us. In short, it can take us out of our comfort zones.
So, how can we better develop and use the power of our curious natures as a positive attribute?
Some expert insights
Curiosity and questioning are entwined. An expert questionologist and consultant, Berger’s work supports that improving the caliber of our questions is a key to honing curiosity as a character strength.
According to Berger, we live in an information-filled world where answers, at least superficial ones, are readily available via search engines and AI, but good questions are less abundant. “A More Beautiful Question,” and related in-depth information found on Berger’s website, offers insights and examples into questioning that is ambitious, actionable, and promotes change. We can learn to ask the type of questions of others and for self-directed problem solving.
He shows how adept questioning can help us improve our critical thinking skills while checking our inherent cognitive biases. This improved reasoning is ever more vital in a world filled with misinformation and political divisiveness. An interactive Inquiry Quotient (I.Q.) quiz offers a fun test of our acumen as curious questioners.
Curiosity expert and author Scott Shigeoka likewise wrote of using curiosity as a bridge to help him develop personal connections with unlikely people. His book, “Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World,” includes how to use four elements, coined as DIVE―detach, intend, value, and embrace―that he identifies as essential to deep curiosity.
“How to take the high road,” an aptly named magazine story, illustrates how we can be curious about our personal triggers and others’ bad behavior to keep our cool during testy situations.
A state of the mind and of the heart
As a verb, wonder is our desire to know or understand, to ponder, or be curious…as in “I wonder…”. To act with wonder embodies anticipation. With good fortune, our acts of wondering sometimes lead us to a state of wonder, a transformation of a verb into a noun.
Part of the baptismal service in the Book of Common Prayer, asks that God give the newly baptized person “an inquiring and discerning heart…” In a medical essay titled, “The Ancient Heart: What the Heart Meant to Our Ancestors,” cardiologist Vincent Michael Figueredo, MD, observed, “Even today, we act as if we have 2 hearts: a physiological one that keeps us alive, and a symbolic one that defines our emotions, desires, and connections to one another. More in line with historic beliefs of our ancient ancestors and more modern cultural views, research is suggesting that the heart should no longer be viewed as merely a pump, but as part of our emotional vitality that ensures mental, spiritual, and physical health.”
In that sense, when considered on a deeper, more spiritual level, an inquiring heart may indeed be in close kinship with a curious mind.
Curiosity guides different people in different directions, opening us to possibility and wonder. Its lack leads to stagnation.
When he penned the poem “Curiosity” in 1978, poet Alastair Reid underscored a contrast to the cautionary tale of curiosity and the cat. He makes a case against fear of curiosity’s fatality, noting, “Face it. Curiosity will not cause us to die — only lack of it will,” with the sage addition, “Only the curious have if they live a tale worth telling at all.”
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