Curling up into the LMP corner this week is my fun friend, Siân Krubeck!
Siân is a curious cat. She is compassionate yet firm. She is zany yet composed. She is vivacious yet solitary. She is all sorts of confounding traits juxtaposed into one beautiful soul, and she is fascinating.
Of the many things to admire about Siân, she possesses this entrancing quality to welcome and to comfort those around her. She puts people at ease and creates a space where they can open up and be vulnerable as well as crack jokes and be merry. What’s more, she creates these spaces effortlessly through her genuine inquisitiveness; she asks compelling and thought provoking questions that get straight to the heart of the matter.
Getting to know Siân attuned my interest in getting to know myself. I made an effort to be fully present and immersed in our conversations because she devotes herself completely to those she chooses to spend her time with. As a self-proclaimed professional mimic, I did my best to ask her insightful questions and to respond to her inquiries thoughtfully, though each question she asked seemed to confront me with winding philosophical trail systems I was unsure how to traverse.
This pleasant interrogation tactic – paired with her passions for creative writing and video editing as well as with her affinity for all things Ghibli – allowed me to build trust in Siân and to realize that she had something I had misplaced: curiosity.
I have always known curiosity to be integral to how I go about life. It informs most decisions I make, and it illuminates the path I’m meant to travel on. Curiosity is alluring and attractive and magnetic.
Like a magnet, I am naturally pulled towards people, things, and environments that I am curious about. Even if there is no personal interest involved, I can’t help but wonder about how things work and why people find themselves on the paths they are on. And I can’t help but notice that people generally like to talk about their interests and that I am energized when listening to how passionate they are towards them.
I suppose inquiry is a sort of energetic gamble: I wager some of my energy by asking a question; the person has an opportunity to use that energy to respond in an authentic way; I receive energy based on the authenticity of their response, and I use that response to judge if I can ask another question. If both parties are mutually interested, then this process is a wealth of energy to me, and I love to use it to acquaint, to learn, and to feel inspired. In fact, just yesterday, I found myself in a lengthy conversation about disk golf, of which I knew next to nothing about but now would be very interested to try.
However, if I am the only one putting effort into inquiry, and my questions are met with dismissive statements, then I am drained of energy at twice the speed and am discouraged from further questioning. In Pokémon terms, the energy drain is “super effective.”
Unfortunately, this drainage was prevalent throughout my schooling in personal, academic, and extracurricular settings. I was told that my questions were “weird,” that it was funny when I needed extra clarification on one topic versus another, and that my rate of learning was too slow to put effort into. These seemingly benign interactions led me to feel largely misunderstood because in all of these scenarios I was just trying to grow.
Over the years, my curiosity shifted and became less of a genuine interest and more of a defense mechanism. I trained myself to ask the questions that would prevent the most humiliation (i.e., to improve comprehension or to suit the ego of the other person), and I used my curiosity to deflect the focus off of me and back onto the subject at hand. I felt my energy levels deplete in a slow, fatal drip, and I noticed that the curiosity that I would have – and should have – felt in places of high stimulation and excitement were eventually replaced with apathy.
This apathy has been present in relationships. It has been present in scholastic opportunity. It has been present in work environments. It has been present in daily life. In each of these settings, once I figured out how to act in “good behavior” or “at a satisfactory level,” then I just didn’t care to continue.
It wasn’t until I existed outside of the school system and moved to a larger town that my genuine curiosity started to resurface. I learned a lot of life skills out of necessity. I found that Atlanta offers a lot of cool classes and opportunities for adult students lifelong learners, such as myself. I met a lot of compelling and kind people that expressed interest and invested in me as I expressed interest and invested in them.
All of these novel experiences, and all of these sweet people, have encouraged me to tend to my curiosity with nourishment rather than protection.
So, I’m trying to nourish my curiosity through my podcast and through my physical activities and through my creative work. And I’m starting to play with the effects of curiosity on closeness and companionship.
Admittedly, I tend to lose interest in chasing intimacy with people when they make more assumptions than they ask questions or when my effort to befriend is not reciprocated. Lucky for me, though, Siân Krubeck is not “people.” Siân is simply Siân. And because of her communicativeness, her openness, her wit, and her wisdom, I’ll happily chase Siân ‘round and ‘round til my heart is full, my legs give out, and my mind is at peace.
You can follow Siân, and all of her romantic writing endeavors, on Instagram and Twitter @sjkrubeck
Referenced people and materials:
StarTalk with Neil deGrasse Tyson
“Stoopidly expensive” SimpleHuman Stainless Steel Trashcans
A couple of articles about human design:
Take courses online through Coursera
All music for the podcast lovingly created by Ian T. Jones.
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