If You Can Cultivate One Skill During Times of Upheaval, Let it Be This One
Curiosity is multipurpose and adaptive, and will see you through times of great change.
This blog post is now a podcast episode!
These are not easy times for creatives. Creative people must maintain a certain level of sensitivity and receptivity if they want to continue to do their creative work. When the whole world seems to have gone insane, we are slapped with a horrible dilemma: do we protect our gentle souls by closing ourselves off, or do we allow ourselves to be open to all the turmoil in order to continue to create? Sometimes it’s not a choice. Creative blockage is a natural reaction to challenging times.
The year 2020 has changed our world forever. We instinctively understand that there will be no “getting back to normal.” But the events of this year are part of a larger movement of history. This hasn’t been just a bad year – for better or for worse it’s the gateway to a new era. And most of us creative gentle souls understandably have a lot of fear about what has been happening and how it will develop. How can we survive in these changing times? How can we thrive? If there’s one skill you can work to develop and strengthen in the new era, let it be this one: curiosity. Here’s why. Curiosity is the antidote to fear, and is thus the wellspring of creativity.
Curiosity is open-minded.
Fear shuts the doors of our soul. Slams them shut. In shutting us off from the world, it makes our own personal world small. Too small to contain the resources we need to thrive creatively. That’s the compromise we make, often knowingly: we avoid discomfort or pain, but it means we live in a creative straightjacket. This may feel right in the moment. You do what you have to do to survive. I’ve been there, spent years in that place. It’s called burnout. And burnout is something you have to get through by going through – trying to avoid or ignore it won’t work. But when you are ready, developing curiosity can help you open up your world again.
What is curiosity? It’s caring about things. This is why it tends to disappear when fear begins to rule your perspective. When you care, you are vulnerable to hurt. So start small. Maybe the thing you are able to care about right now is the ant colony in your backyard. What’s it like to be an ant, I wonder? (Seriously, I do wonder). Ultimately creatives are drawn to the big questions – why do people behave as they do? But if all you’ve got in you right now is a question about the secret lives of ants, that’s more than fine.
When you’re ready to let your world get a little bigger, curiosity will help you deal with the big feelings: the fear, pain, and confusion. When despair clouds your vision, intellectual curiosity can help you separate yourself somewhat from the traumas of our age. The work of creatives requires us to immerse ourselves in the eddies and swells of the current zeitgeist. Being able to pull out by cultivating an observational perspective is critical to keeping our sanity. The balance between analytical and emotional engagement is like constantly adjusting a zoom lens. Diving in deep, pulling out. Getting sucked into the swirl, dragging ourselves to shore. Curiosity helps us exercise those muscles.
Curiosity is ambiguity-embracing.
The world defies our control-seeking drive toward rationality. It is full of circumstances that don’t go as planned for reasons we cannot understand, of events we could not predict, and outcomes that defy logic. While this is always true, during times like these, when the fabric of our reality is ripping apart, it becomes particularly apparent. If it feels like the world is insane, that up is down and wrong is right, it’s because during times of great change our deeply held assumptions and beliefs are shown for what they are: socially constructed realities that are flimsier than we had ever imagined.
The universe’s basic architecture is one of paradox. The human social world tries to counteract this by creating order, but ultimately we can never fully escape the fundamental ambiguity of our existence. As much as we try to crystalize our understanding of things into structures of knowledge that are both explanatory and predictive, we will always eventually be confounded. If we keep trying to fit reality to our conception of what reality should be, we will continually be hitting our head against a wall. Curiosity is what enables us to perceive and acknowledge the inherent ambiguity and unpredictability of the human predicament. Because curiosity is a seeking quality, it fosters a sense of interest when faced with mystery, rather than repulsion or resentment. This is important because…
Curiosity is boundary-pushing.
During times of upheaval and change, creative people have an opportunity to thrive. But we will only be able to do that if we make use of the situation before us. Look at it this way: part of the reason our world is going through such turmoil right now is because people are craving change. They are tired of the stagnant old ways. Remember: while it appears that our institutions are experiencing a breakdown, it’s part of a larger process of breakthrough. This is a natural evolution all cultures and societies go through every now and again – and people who are able to see what is happening and take advantage of it to create new opportunities from the rubble of the old ones will flourish. But it requires being open to both the world and our own responses to it. It requires having a broader vision, seeing beyond conventional, fear-based interpretations of circumstances, and pushing back against the reactionary contractions that always meet the emergence of new ways of being. Remember: contractions are paradoxically the very movements that result in birth.
Creative people are primed for times such as these, but only if they can maintain their openness to the world around them. Curiosity can guide and sustain you. If you can develop one skill to get you through these crazy times, let it be curiosity.