Tag: curiosity

Newfound Celebrity

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“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness.” – Allen Ginsberg

On Tuesday night my daughter was on the news. It was a complete fluke. I rounded my kids up to go out for popsicles about 10 minutes from where we live instead of our go-to gelato place up the hill. The popsicle place was closed so we ended up going back to the usual place in our neighborhood. When we got there a camera crew was wanting to interview the gelato staff about how people are dealing with the upcoming heat wave. We were at the counter and they asked if they could interview us outside. I had no desire to be on camera but my soon to be 6-years-old daughter was excited so I said “yes” for her benefit.

They were so gentle and asked her lots of questions about how she plans on beating the heat. She said she was excited for it because, “Let’s see, I think I’d go to spray parks.” And whether she minded the heat and she answered she didn’t because it was special to eat ice cream in the heat because otherwise “It’s not so special because it’s not so hot.” Those were the quotes they used – she answered all their questions pretty darn well and when it was done she said. “It’s my dream come true to be on tv.” All before she is 6. 🙂

My toddler just got to sit at the table and eat his gelato which he did enthusiastically because I think he was happy to be able to just sit there without anyone messing with his portion. But as they zoomed in on his face, his sister’s spoon enters the frame and steals a bite so the encroachment that is his lot in life was well-documented on tv!

And they asked me questions too. I’ve done some public speaking and also a lot of training classes so I was surprised at how different it was to be interviewed. I felt this complete tunnel vision so that I couldn’t think independently of what they were asking me. And this was just a fluff piece! I felt so much sympathy for anyone being interviewed or questioned about anything serious. It made me sense how strongly we seek approval when we speak.

As they were wrapping up and we were finished with our ice cream, my daughter asked for the car keys. I told her no because there are good reasons to be on the news and bad reasons to be on the news. The camerawoman overheard this and laughed. My daughter asked what the bad reasons to be on the news were. As I ticked off because you’ve been in an accident or have done something wrong, I was glad to see that her newfound celebrity hadn’t pierced her curiosity and independent thinking in the least!

Three Things

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“Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.” – Buddha

I’m a sucker for things are written in wood, anything that advises to be kind and advice that comes in three. So I couldn’t help but notice this sign when we’re stayed at a beach footage this weekend.

It made me think about what my three instructions would be. Be curious. Be vulnerable. Be kind.

But I keep wanting to add on with things like never stop trying and it’s going to be great, kid! Which is why I never write in wood.

The Power of Curiosity

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“If you see the soul in every living being, you see truly.” – The Bhagavad Gita

My five-year-old daughter kills snails. Let me pause here and say that it’s not a serial-killer-in-training kind of thing where she tortures and then decapitates them or something like that. It’s very well-intentioned interference in their life where she builds these very elaborate snail houses with pools and vegetation and then stocks them with snails. But then she’ll put them directly in the sun or forget to refill the water and oops, another snail is dead. One of my friends gave her a Bug Hotel terrarium and she put so many unfortunate snails in there that I started to call it the Bates Motel.

I have a friend who does a similar thing with humans (the help thing, not the killing thing). She doles out well-intentioned help to people that she believes need an upgrade in their circumstances. Unfortunately it sometimes backfires when people feel like they are projects and don’t absorb the help they are given.

I recently listened to this Dare to Lead podcast with Brene Brown and Michael Bungay Stanier that talked about the pitfalls of giving advice – the person with a problem may not accurately know what the problem is, any solution that you offer might not solve the root issue and even if you have the perfect solution, it can undercut their ownership of solving the problem themselves. Michael Stanier’s advice was to stay curious a little bit longer.

This seems to be a common theme in the content I’m listening to and reading these days – the power of curiosity. Asking open-ended questions like “how can I help?” and “what makes you think that?” and “say more” changes the nature of the conversation. Curiosity brings the power of mindfulness to an interaction and is a gateway for openness, an antidote to judgment. If we believe that we don’t have enough time to have these conversations, think about how much time it takes to solve problems again and again because we didn’t get it right the first time.

I’m finding curiosity a great tool for parenting because kids have so much of it. I could continue to slip out at night and free the snails or I can flat out tell her not to capture them but both of those solutions undermine her ability to see the soul in everything. Because of course this is not just about my daughter and snails, it’s about our agency in this world and learning not to destroy it. I’m hopeful as we research about whether snails grow out of their shells, what leaves they like best and how long they usually live that we can connect more deeply with compassion for others and retire the Bates Motel.

Bottomless Questions

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“Keep your feet on the ground and your thoughts at lofty heights.” – Peace Pilgrim

When I awaken every morning, I tiptoe past both the kids closed bedroom doors and walk downstairs with the cat winding her way around my ankles. After I feed her and do a little stretching or yoga, I meditate. I have three or four books that I keep next to my meditation cushion and I read these short meditations as I sip my tea. The thing I like best about this practice is that when I flip to the page for April 20th in the Book of Awakening by Mark Nepo for instance, what is written there is usually something different that whatever is on the top of my mind for the day. It takes me out of my life for a moment to ponder a bigger or deeper theme instead of the logistics of my day.

So today when I opened another of my books, A Year of Daily Joy by Jennifer Louden, I loved that what she proposed, “Try asking bottomless questions – the kind that tantalize and stretch you.” Her examples were “How can I love more?” and “What do I want to create today?”

I sat with this idea for a while, watching the sun start to play on the house across from me, the birds flitting in and out of my plum tree, the feeling of observation starting to warm up my engagement with life and came up with this question “How can I bring curiosity into what I see and do today?”

The feeling of that question matches with my mood when I awaken. Light and open — and curious. My morning routine helps me set the tone for the day so that even long after what I read gets forgotten in the bustle of the day, I am still sustained by the broader horizon that came with my morning moments. I love the idea of posing that bottomless question to intentionally lengthen that note throughout the busy-ness of the day.