Guest columnist Daniel Cantor Yalowitz: Growing through curiosity

By DANIEL CANTOR YALOWITZ

Published: 12-27-2024 2:24 PM

“A sense of curiosity is nature’s original school of education.” — Unknown

We are born into the world unknowing but highly curious. It is our curiosity that enables us to survive our earliest hours and days. At birth we lack the vocabulary to express thoughts and feelings. However, we use our tears, eye contact, and simple gestures to communicate what’s going on inside us. We do this to articulate our needs and wants.

We don’t know where any of this will get us. It is our curiosity about the world that allows us to keep trying until someone responds in a helpful manner. This is all because somewhere inside, we know that we want and need more from the world than we have immediate access to or control over.

Over time, these gross-motor gestures, the high-pitched crying, and our everyday unconscious efforts at cuteness turn into other things — still based on curiosity. After those first loud utterances, our little ones get grabby and demanding. They want what they want when they want it; in their own developmentally appropriate way they are “reaching out.” Their fingers, not just their mouths, are making statements of curiosity.

Soon enough, children learn the fine art of asking questions. The queries we utter are further extensions of the mind’s desire to learn, to understand and, finally, to make sense of an incomprehensible world. Asking questions of others is one of the most poignant forms of communication and extending our world beyond where it is at any given moment. We are curious about things that really seem to matter to us — otherwise, why bother?

For me, it was only in middle adulthood, when teaching the arts of intercultural communication at an international institute that I was able to craft the three-letter question that still matters to me more than any other: “Is there more?” Over the years since then, I have drawn on this question in my teaching, training and consulting — and it seems to resonate with the vast majority of those with whom I have worked around the world.

Why so? Because almost all of us are curious!

Asked with sincerity, this simple question becomes profound. “Is there more?” demonstrates an open mind that is keen to discern what “else” about any given situation in life may be of concern to us. The good news with this is that most people want to respond to this question by generating answers and responses! This gives us more information than perhaps most other question-and-answer combos might.

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Simply put, curiosity is a strong desire to know or learn something. Simple — but at the same time, amazingly complex. There are so many ways to express our curiosity, to articulate our interest in knowing something or learning more. Since most of us don’t live in vacuums or bubbles, our existence is generally predicated on gaining insight and information from others.

Without curiosity, there would be little opportunity to get out of our own way. Likely we would make the same mistakes or clumsy efforts over and over, and over again. The wonderment that curiosity brings enables others to contribute their goodness, knowledge and wisdom to our lives.

Like the seed that pushes up against all odds to become a flower, bush or tree, human curiosity serves to nurture us day by day. We use the impetus emanating from our questions and hunger to know to help us create, in whatever ways, in any situation that may be sanguine. As a way of being in the world, curiosity enables us to go above and beyond wherever we are in the present.

The early 20th-century Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky (1896-1934) brought into existence his theory of the “zone of proximal development.” In it, he introduced the concept that refers to the gap between a child’s current level of development and the level they are capable of reaching with tools provided by others with greater knowledge. Young children are able to learn because they are curious, because elders are eager to teach them, and because they have a strong wish to develop mastery in order to “succeed” in the world.

While I will write more on the concept of play next year, for this moment I will mention that, according to the Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, “play is the work of childhood.” Our ability to play as growing children is another way we express our curiosity.

One thing that differentiates play from work or other life pursuits is that the “outcome” cannot be known before play has begun. If we weren’t curious, why bother with play? We play for the fun of it. We also play to refine skills, whether they be gross or fine motor or cognitive or social aptitudes. Curiosity is a major driver here.

We can and should be thankful that for most of us, curiosity is innate. From the utterance of our first cry that announces our being to the world, most of what we do comes from our need to know, our desire to learn, and the necessity of having our basic needs met. Perhaps we might even think of curiosity as that “thing” that enables us to grow, to move from a situation of surviving to a circumstance of thriving. We are all blessed to have and to use our curiosity for any number of positive causes.

Daniel Cantor Yalowitz, of Greenfield, is a developmental and intercultural psychologist, who has facilitated change in many organizations and communities around the world. His two most recent books are “Journeying with Your Archetypes” and “Reflections on the Nature of Friendship.” Reach out to him at danielcyalowitz@gmail.com.