On curiosity

Hi, how are you today? I have a heavy heart, there's so much to hold and it’s all happening at the same time: the pandemic, the black lives lost, the situation in my home country. I’ve been thinking and talking a lot about curiosity, so let me take the space here to expand a bit more on it.
When we think of ourselves, our struggles, our relationships, our dreams, curiosity is not necessarily the first quality that comes to mind. Maybe this challenging time is when we start exploring it.
Curiosity becomes a tool when we use it to get more space around things we might not yet understand, things we might need some time to process. As we move into new phases of these pandemic, predicting the future can show up as an obsession, making personal decisions of what it feels right or not, knowing and honoring our boundaries. To turn into curiosity might be a way to support all of us navigating this transition, this can look like: “I don’t know how I feel about this, let me sit with it for a bit”, “I don’t know what the future holds, I'm choosing to focus on today”,“I don’t have an answer about this, I'm leaning into what I do know now”. Curiosity is a way through. It’s information, it helps us get closer and more aware. We are listening. It’s important to remember that we have this possibility as well, to lean into curiosity even if it means it’s unfolding. We certainly don’t have all the answers nor should we expect to have them, especially at a time like this. However, we can choose to stay curious around what is uncomfortable rather than immediately jump into the same old projections we assume, rather than responding with fear. I’m not saying we should throw out of the window our challenging and conflicting emotions or our need for stability, even if it’s based on fear. We don’t have to let that completely go. We can continue to hold space for it while getting more curious around it.
When we don’t really know what to think, what to say, what to do…curiosity can be a way, a new open lane, a direction or just a safe place to land. Viktor Frankl, a survivor of Auschwitz, who went on to write the “Man’s searching for meaning” and found Logotherapy said:  “Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.” I’d add maybe that space is curiosity!

With love,
Mariana