The Slow Way Newsletter: Curiosity is a Cure for Hustle
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unhurried thoughts
Curiosity is a Cure for Hustle
Last week a couple of old friends from our earliest days in San Francisco drove from their new home in Manhattan to our suburban Jersey house for a day of swimming at the neighborhood pool. Their move from SF to NYC was recent and we had the best time catching up on their lives and work and babies.
Our friend, let’s call him “Drew,” is one of those people who takes relational risks, who strikes up conversations with strangers wherever he goes. And as I spent the day with him I found myself mesmerized by his courage. He was introducing us to people in our neighborhood we hadn’t yet taken the time to talk to. He was having twenty minute long conversations at the pool with the guy who heads up the big fundraiser. He met the mayor of our town at a coffee shop on the way to our house!
Now, listen. I tell you this story not because I’m down on myself for being an introvert. I like myself, and I like how I engage with the world. I’m a natural watcher of people: I like to sit alone at coffee shops and eavesdrop on conversations, and sometimes write down what people say to each other. (Chris says that’s weird and I shouldn’t admit to that.) But people are fascinating, and I’m endlessly amazed both by our goodness and our ability to hurt one another. In my younger years I spent a lot of time mistaking extroversion for Jesus-following, and forced myself to live in a constant state of anxiety about how many people I should be talking to and how widely I should be smiling. All of that I left behind a long time ago, recognizing the gifts that we quieter types bring the world.
But as I watched Drew move happily from stranger to stranger I wasn’t thinking there was something wrong with me. I was thinking there was something remarkable about him.
I kept thinking: How does a person put himself in such vulnerable relational places, and what is the motivator for that kind of courage?
So I asked him on our way home from the pool. He was telling me about his cross-country roadtrip with his best buds as he drove his family’s stuff from SF to NYC. He told me about conversations with locals in diners, where he wound up talking about politics with strangers with very different and sometimes personally hostile views. “How could you bear it?” I asked him. “I mean, was it painful? Were you ever scared for your safety?”
“Nah,” he said. “We built up to those moments in the conversations. We started with the small stuff and by the time we got to it, they weren’t threatening me. They were just sharing their stories.”
“I guess I just can’t imagine having the courage to start the conversation in the first place,” I said. We were walking home from the pool, pushing our kids in strollers.
“Honestly?” he said, “I’m just curious. I’m just so curious about people. I want to understand what makes them tick. So I ask them questions. And I listen.”
I keep thinking about Drew’s words, his willingness to suspend judgment for the sake of curiosity. His willingness to put himself in a vulnerable position simply because he cares about people and wants to understand them.
I wonder if my natural inclination to gravitate toward “safe” people or relational spaces that won’t ask me to take risks is less of an acceptance of who I am and more of a lack of curiosity. Maybe I’m just comfortable not knowing what makes the stranger tick. I don’t think we all need to be like Drew, but I do wonder what might happen if we tapped more deeply into our capacity for curiosity, especially with the people we are closest to.
This week I’m in Texas with my family. My dad is still recovering from brain surgery four weeks ago, and I’m proud of my brothers and sisters in law and all our kids for the ways we’ve rallied and cheered and shown up to care for him, my mom, and one another. But I also have found myself so fixated on my dad’s medical needs, and the details of treatments and insurance and decisions that I can miss the opportunity to ask questions, to be present in the stories of the people I love, to let the intensity of the needs around me settle down so we can all see one another’s humanity.
That’s a slow work. In the midst of our checklists and anxieties, personalities and excuses for keeping to ourselves, there is a way that curiosity slows the clock down and reminds us that every human we encounter, the stranger at the coffee shop and the family member in the hospital room is a human with layer upon layer of stories, endless beauty. Curiosity is a form of loving, and it teaches us to turn off the often-toxic demands of our daily to-dos and recognize the image of God before us in every face we encounter.
In Pico Iyer’s work The Art of Stillness, he talks about hustle as something that leads to unknowing ourselves. When we don’t stop we can’t be curious about our own motives, our own choices, our own dreams. And it’s the same in our relationships. When we hustle along in life with the people we love, we often forget to be curious about their motives, their dreams, their stories underneath their patterns of behavior.
Curiosity is a cure for hustle.
Curiosity is a form of love.
a slow practice
A few years back when I was in therapy working through the loss of a pregnancy and a season of deep anxiety, my therapist had a phrase she used over and over: "Let's be curious about that." She'd say it after I nonchalantly waved away a moment as "not a big deal," when it obviously had triggered me, or when I tried to push myself to move on past my grief or compare my grief to someone else's "worse" experience.
"Let's be curious about that, Micha," she would say.
I wonder if you can be curious about yourself today. If you can step back from the rules you use to hold yourself in check, or the permissions you grant yourself of what feeling is appropriate and what isn't. Can you look at yourself and whatever challenge you're walking through in this season and be genuinely curious?
Find some time to pull out a piece of paper and draw a large circle. On the outside of that circle write down the heaviest burden in your life right now. Maybe you're like me and you've been watching a loved one suffer a terrible illness. Or maybe you're not working right now, or feeling lost in your faith, or struggling to find a way forward in your relationships. Whatever it is, write it on the outside of the circle. Now, at the top of the page write: "Let's be curious about that."
Take a deep breath. Close your eyes and let yourself settle deeper beneath the initial burden. What is the fear underneath this hard thing? What makes this hard thing particularly scary for you? Draw a circle under the circle and write whatever comes to your mind. What are you afraid of?
Now let's be curious about that as well. Why is that the fear that has most burdened you in this situation? What does that fear tell you about yourself, about your relationships? Draw an even smaller circle and write whatever word or phrase comes to mind for what makes that particular fear so heavy for you.
Now, let's be curious about that. What form of kindness do you need to cushion that fear? What do you need from God, from yourself? Spend sometime looking at yourself as someone worthy of tenderness, Someone with human needs. What is the story underneath the story you're currently living?
Listen for God's voice of curiosity and grace. Remind yourself that your story is deeper than you may understand right now, but it is known and held by God.