The Value Of Curiosity
Old age begins when curiosity disappears
José Saramago
As we get older, we get used to the reality around us and become familiar with ourselves. Past experiences shape our perception of the world, and teach us lessons that we will carry within for the rest of our lives.
It is easy to make assumptions based on past experiences and lessons, sometimes indiscriminately. When we are faced with an unknown problem or situation, our minds perceive a place of confusion and conflict, like a breach.
To cope with this discrepancy, our mind naturally tends to fill in the blanks with information gleaned from what we have already experienced. This is, for example, a very common method of creating fictitious details in memories that were originally true.
Assumptions
It happens to speculate about other people’s behavior or the future with frightening ease. As we have already said, we need it to eliminate uncertainties, before they turn into a more uncomfortable feeling than ever.
The problem, or the damage, that assumptions cause to creativity takes shape when they are based on very simple reasoning hinged on a weak foundation. This means that assumptions are not negative in themselves, but that they tend to become negative when curiosity is not the driving force.
We are talking here about the kind of curiosity, for example, that advances science. All scientific branches feed on curiosity, the search for answers to problems derived from reality or simply from the mental game that resides in the curiosity of knowledge .
In this way, curiosity stimulates our creative mechanisms, imposes on them a challenge to face while at the same time stimulating our cognitive system, so that it starts looking for an answer. Just like when we get that wonderful sense of impudence as children, and we ask.
Those who have lost their curiosity have also lost the wonderful ability to be amazed
The case of curiosity in children
The relationship between creativity and curiosity is symbiotic and bilateral: one cannot exist without the other. It would be like eating without being hungry, drinking without being thirsty, or kissing without love.
Young children, under the age of 6, go through a phase in their life where everything turns into a question. This phenomenon is common as their mind has the same characteristics as a blank blackboard: they cannot rely on previous experiences to refer to, but they have a present to face and from which they want to learn as much as possible, to take advantage of it. .
Children ask a lot of questions and learn quickly because they are curious. Curiosity is that feeling that keeps them interested and with the desire to discover more and more things.
The role of curiosity within creativity
Creativity requires an open mind, someone who is not satisfied with “recycling” old experiences, theories or assumptions. The innovations and advances that have taken place throughout history have always been generated by the desire to challenge theories taken for granted, as well as by the need to ask questions about knowledge handed down over the centuries and which were taken for granted by the current system. Sometimes, mistakenly.
An example are the painters who through new colors and techniques go beyond the limits of what is already known, thanks to the curiosity that allows them to enhance their art.
New and creative ideas come to life thanks to the initiative of those who, stimulated by curiosity, decide to experiment and ask themselves questions, until they discover something new. But the real beauty lies in the fact that when one is curious, fears diminish.
We learn of new information that intrigues us, which makes us want to know more. Without a physiological need to satisfy, without giving any importance to the fear of failure, to rejection, to what is unknown, and without paying attention to the fear that what is said could be contested, or turn out to be simply wrong.
Curiosity is like a thirst that must be satisfied, an impulse that must be satisfied. Many times without paying attention to the price.
