Reflections from the Road: Curiosity

I identify as an oversharer. If you know me, you are probably making big eyes and nodding your head in agreement. I often interrupt myself and ask the person who posed a question if they really want to know the answer or were they just being polite. The question poser usually doesn't admit to just being polite, allows me to finish with my full answer, and are then often taken aback when I ask them a follow up question.

A perfect example of this is: How was spending time with your family over the holidays? Enough time has passed that you may not remember asking someone this, but I would place a bet that you did — regardless of what holidays, if any, you celebrate or observe — because it is the polite thing to ask shortly after the December holidays. I can answer this in two ways. 1) Quiet. or 2) I spiraled into a really bad depression, cooked a lot of food, hosted a fun game night with new and old friends, had a powerful conversation with my brother about losing our parents and then him being a parent for his children without a role model, and am doing much better now. How do you balance connections with family (chosen and/or biological) and friends from great distances throughout the year?

1) Quiet. This answers a person's question without giving them much room to ask follow up questions, though often they still do. Sometimes it is just enough information for the question poser to remember that I don't celebrate Jewish or Christian holidays so the weekend was really just that — a weekend. Maybe they remember that my family hasn't gathered together really since my mother died almost 20 years ago. Perhaps the one word answer goes unnoticed as the question poser was just asking to fill the silence and be polite by initiating a friendly yet empty conversation.

2) I spiraled into a really bad depression, cooked a lot of food, hosted a fun game night with new and old friends, had a powerful conversation with my brother about losing our parents and then him being a parent for his children without a role model, and am doing much better now. How do you balance connections with family (chosen and/or biological) and friends from great distances throughout the year?

This is actually how I would prefer to answer the question. It is the full truth about my experience and genuinely offers an opportunity for me and the question poser to learn about each other. I typically would interrupt myself between cooking and game night to make sure the person really wants to know. If they don't sometimes, I don't go any further because they aren't even paying attention anymore. I can get really self conscious about over sharing and making folks feel uncomfortable. Sometimes I also don't want to share or am not in a genuine conversation space and really just want to finish an impersonal transaction and go about my day. I try to pay attention and increase the number of genuine conversations in my life by decreasing the number of polite yet robotic transcript exchanges. I want to increase my listening and decrease my pace of life so that I have space to truly learn and engage with others. I want my sense of curiosity to thrive and I want to inspire curiosity in others.

Curiosity and genuine conversations aren't about being on fact finding missions. Curiosity is about opening spaces between yourself, loved ones, and even strangers to share and learn. If you can find a connection between your experiences and those of others, then time can stop, and real change can happen — just like that —in a split second — both parties are left different. I can tell you that my mother died of cancer when I was 19; I stopped talking to my father shortly after that who then died of a massive heart attack on a treadmill 10 years later. I can share that we stopped celebrating holidays as a family when my mom died. These are facts. You might be able to extrapolate deeper meanings of lessons that then help you add to the story you have already written about me. This doesn't, however, get to the deeper level of my experience or that of many others that do still have living family. A deeper conversation doesn't have to be longer, inconvenient, or serious in nature. Curious conversations are the many that I had during and after the holiday season with friends who were surrounded by extended family members and felt alone, and those of us who don't have family and felt deeply connected to the long standing tradition of gathering together and celebrating possibilities that lie ahead.

Curious conversations might be more than recipe exchanges but the exchange of traditional foods, secret ingredients, and rituals that occur generation after generation, year after year, that go unnoticed, unchallenged, until they disappear. Then curious conversations can take place that are reminiscent of things, people, places, and memories that can encourage all to appreciate where we are at right now. Curiosity is about personal traditions that one chooses to carry over in their own families and what is passed down to children, friends, mentees, employees, strangers. This works in the other direction too — what have you learned lately from strangers, subordinates, friends, children, family members from long ago?

There is a level of authenticity, generosity, and vulnerability, that is required to be truly curious. The safety of knowing everything and having predictable answers to the robotic transcript exchange can easily play the part of connection and even mask any awkwardness one might feel or even experience. What if you increased the number of conversations where you don't know the outcome? What if you listened to the full and complete answers and asked clarifying questions to go even deeper with the person you are in dialog with. What if you do this with the folks you have on speed dial? Share morning coffee traditions with? Share family experiences with? Your email provider knows their addresses by the first or second letter? Yourself? Curiosity is the root of all self reflection. If you can't be curious about what you don't know about the ones closest to you — the likelihood of having curious conversations with strangers is unlikely.

Who do you think you know best in the world? What don't you know about them? What do they not know about you? Here is a good starting point: pick someone in your inner circle (however you may define this group). If you had to order a pizza in this person 's absence, would you know what to order? Would they know what to order for you? What is their best pizza memory? What is yours? Grab a slice of time and see what comes from this conversation. Just be curious.

Social Justice Quotations That Keep Me Going:

"One of the consequences of racism in our society is that those who oppose racism are often marginalized, and as a result, their stories are not readily accessed. Yet having access to these stories makes a difference to those Whites who are looking for ways to be agents of change. White people who are doing this work need to make their stories known to serve as guides for others."
Beverly Daniel Tatum, Ph.D., "Why Are All the Black Kids Sitting Together in the Cafeteria?" And Other Conversations About Race

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