Curiosity and 'Rising Strong'

I recently read Brene Brown's 'Rising Strong'.  I have always enjoyed her writing, but I got more from this book than from any of her others.  In particular, there were a few pages on curiosity, which resonate with me not only because of my previous blogpost on the subject.  I quote at length from her book here:

'Choosing to be curious is choosing to be vulnerable because it requires us to surrender to uncertainty.  It wasn't always a choice; we were born curious.  But over time, we learnt that curiosity, like vulnerability, can lead to hurt.  As a result, we turn to self-protecting - choosing certainty over curiosity, armor [sic] over vulnerability, and knowing over learning.  But shutting down comes with a price - a price we rarely consider when we'refocused on finding our way out of pain.

Einstein said, 'The important thing is not to stop questioning.  Curiosity has its own reason for existence.'  Curiosity's reason for existing is not simple to be a tool used in acquiring knowledge; it reminds us that we're alive.  Researchers are finding evidence that curiosity is correlated with creativity, intelligence, improved learning and memory, and problem-solving....

...the upside of curiosity outweighs discomfort....Curiosity is a shit-starter.  But that's okay.  Sometimes we have to rumble with a story to find the truth....

In his book 'Curious: The Desire to Know and Why your Future Depends on It' Ian Leslie writes, 'Curiosity is unruly.  It doesn't like rules, or, at least, it assumes that all rules are provisional, subject to the laceration of a smart question nobody has yet thought to ask.  It disdains approved pathways, preferring diversions, unplanned excursions, impulsive left turns.  In short, curiosity is deviant.'

That is exactly why curiosity is so vital to this process: The diverse and sometimes erratic course of rising strong is also unruly.  Embracing the vulnerability it takes to rise up from a fall and grow stronger makes us a little dangerous...

...We have to have some level of knowledge of awareness before we can get curious.  We aren't curious about something we are unaware of or know nothing about.  Loewenstein explains that simply encouraging people to ask questions doesn't go very far toward stimulating curiosity.....'it may be necessary to 'prime the pump' - to use intriguing information to get folks interested so they become more curious.'

The good news is that a growing number of researchers believe that curiosity and knowledge-building grow together - the more we know, the more we want to know.  The bad news is that many of us are raised believing that emotions aren't worthy of our attention.  In other words, we don't know enough and/or we aren't sufficiently aware of the power of our emotions and how they're connected to our thoughts and behaviours, so we fail to get curious.

...Poet and writer William Plomer wrote, 'Creativity is the power to connect the seemingly unconnected'.   Connecting the dots of our lives, especially the ones we'd rather erase or skip over, requires equal parts self-love and curiosity: How do all of these experiences come together to make up who I am?

Curiosity led me to adopt and live by the belief that 'nothing is wasted'....As difficult and dark as some of those times were, they all connect to form the real me, the integrated and whole me.'

Like Brown, I can look back at the years when I had no idea where I was headed and longed for a clear path, feeling as though I was wasting my life away as I worked as a librarian, vet assistant, bank clerk, secretary, bookseller, home companion, teacher of English, wannabee missionary, traveller of the world - not to mention years of depression and heartache and frustrated creativity - but now, nearly thirty years on, I recognise the great value of those searching years when it seemed I was waiting to start really living.  Truly, nothing is wasted if we remain curious about ourselves.