Curiosity is a practice 🌀
By Katya Stepanov
“Curiosity is a practice, not an instance,”
I thought to myself as I listened to my fellow panelists from CLASP and the Peace Corps at the Women in Government Relations DEI Summit last month. Over 75 leaders came together to explore Building Bridges through Ethical Storytelling, and I had the honor of contributing to the conversation.
There is no single definition of “ethical storytelling” or easy 5-step process to follow.
Whether or not a story is told ethically depends on how the process of receiving, translating and sharing the story is facilitated by the storyteller. More importantly, it is determined by how the person who's story is being told feels before, during and after.
Curiosity is a genuine desire to learn. It is expressed through the act and art of asking questions. When we are children, curiosity is as easy to access as breath.
“Why do we live here?”,
“Why is that person wearing that?”
“Why are they making that face?”
We ask questions openly and constantly so we can start to construct our own stories about ourselves and others. These stories live on in our psyche until they are revisited and tested.
As we grow older, we start to feel the invisible pressure of knowing. We should know why someone does something a certain way, or how someone feels. We should know about this culture, or that. We may have been shamed for asking questions, and so, one day, our curiosity dwindles and is replaced by anxiety.
As adults, the stories we tell and the stories we hear often lack curiosity. Media outlets extract stories to support controversial and polarizing headlines, conflicts arise at work due to lack of understanding, and we are incentivized to make assumptions based on unexamined stereotypes.
So how do we reclaim this innate wisdom we so effortlessly embodied as children?
We come together, and we practice.
Again and again, we notice when we're making up a story about someone. Instead of leaving it that way, we turn it into a question. We ask, and we connect.