Rekindling curiosity

Kids grow up with innate curiosity. It’s the hardwired instinct that permits us to walk, talk and survive long before we get to school.

And at school, the industrial imperative prizes rigor over just about everything else. Obedience, detail orientation and system compliance are the unstated goals.

Curiosity is supposed to fend for itself, apparently.

Once we leave school and enter the workforce, curiosity gets even less encouragement. That’s a shame, because while many institutions suffer from too much rigor, just about all of them would benefit from more curiosity.

If you are lucky enough to find a curious person, perhaps they could benefit from a little rigor. But if you encounter a rigorous person, the real opportunity is to rekindle their curiosity. It’s there, we simply need to encourage it.

Rigor over curiosity is such a good way to distinguish what’s desired over what should be encouraged. Great teachers push back against this, but the system itself doesn’t support the open minded way of wondering about the world.

Leonardo Da Vinci, by Walter Isaacson, perfectly captures the curious mind of Da Vinci. He relentlessly sought to learn about the world around him, and found unique ways to pull knowledge together toward art, toward invention, and toward curiosity for its own sake.

Kids have this. Most adults lose it.

Each day we can take tiny steps toward rekindling our minds, and the minds of those around us.

Via Seth Godin.