Curiosity, Conversation and the Unexpected

What happens when we give ourselves space to wonder, and invite others to wonder with us?

I was flicking through Steal Like an Artist by Austin Kleon recently. It's a book about creativity, finding inspiration and, perhaps most importantly, actually doing things.

One page caught my attention. It contained two simple instructions:

Step one: Wonder at something.

Step two: Invite others to wonder with you.

I've been thinking about this quite a bit recently. It's good to wonder about things on our own, but there are so many more dimensions to explore when we share that curiosity with others.

I haven't had as much space for those kinds of conversations as I'd like recently, and I really miss them. Partly it's about time, and partly it's about opportunity. Responsibilities have a habit of taking over, and the things that need doing tend to take priority over the things we'd simply like to do.

These kind of conversations don't necessarily have a purpose or an outcome and often happen by accident. They might start with an interesting idea, a question, something we've read or an observation about everyday life and then take us somewhere unexpected. Someone offers a different perspective, questions something we've taken for granted or introduces a thought that hadn't occurred to us.

We may come away with a better understanding or with more questions. Either way, there's something valuable about having the space to think and discover together.

When did curiosity become a means to an end?

Much of our working and personal lives is organised around finding answers.

We identify problems, gather information, weigh up options and make decisions. We want to understand why something happened, what it means and what we should do next.

Things do need fixing, decisions need making and sometimes we really do need an answer.

And with AI increasingly part of the process, it's becoming easier to move straight from a question to a suggested answer, potentially bypassing some of the weighing up, questioning and exploring along the way.

I wonder whether we've become so accustomed to looking for solutions that we sometimes overlook the pleasure of simply being curious. Of noticing something unusual, questioning an assumption or encountering an idea that doesn't quite fit with what we already believe.

Or of wondering about something without feeling obliged to turn that curiosity into anything useful.

And then there's the delight of discovering something entirely unexpected, something we might never have encountered without taking that curiosity detour.

Which brings me, rather unexpectedly, to woodchip wallpaper.

I've spent a fair amount of time this week trying to remove it from a bedroom ceiling. It's one of those jobs I hadn't planned to do quite so urgently, but circumstances have dictated otherwise.

And while I've been scraping away, I've found myself wondering about the extraordinary resilience of the stuff. Who invented it? Why was it so popular? Did anyone ever give any thought to the poor person who would eventually have to remove it?

I've developed a reluctant admiration for something that is so thoroughly unwanted yet so determined to stay exactly where it is.

It's hardly a profound intellectual discovery, but it has given me plenty of time to think.

And perhaps that's part of what I've been missing recently. Not just the time to let my mind wander, but the opportunity to share those wandering thoughts with someone else. To have a conversation that starts with something quite ordinary and ends up somewhere completely unexpected.

It's not the big, important conversations that I miss most. It's the completely unplanned ones. The conversations that begin with a passing observation and somehow turn into an hour of creative connection spent exploring ideas, sharing experiences and seeing things from a different perspective.

The difference between wondering and knowing

When we think we already know what's happening, we tend to interpret what we see through that understanding. We notice the things that support our explanation and may pay less attention to those that don't.

Curiosity introduces a little space. There may be another explanation. Things may be more complicated than they first appeared. The people we're talking to may see and understand the situation quite differently. Our experiences, expertise and knowledge matter, but there is a difference between drawing on what we know and assuming that what we know is all there is to know.

In counselling, coaching, supervision, organisations and our personal lives, we inevitably develop ways of understanding behaviour, relationships and situations. We draw on theories, models, beliefs and past experiences to help us make sense of complexity.

But these can also, if we're not careful, encourage us to fit what we're observing into an explanation we're already familiar with. Remaining curious means being willing to notice when something doesn't quite fit, and being comfortable enough with uncertainty to explore it.

Perhaps that's one of the things I value most about exploring ideas with other people. Someone else doesn't just bring a different answer. They might ask a completely different question, notice something I've overlooked or challenge an assumption I hadn't even realised I was making.

Inviting someone else to wonder

It's the second part of Kleon's illustration that I find particularly interesting. Not just wondering about something, but inviting other people to wonder with us. The difference between telling someone what we think and sharing something we're still thinking about.

When we explain a conclusion we've already reached, the conversation can easily become about whether the other person agrees or disagrees. When we share something we're genuinely curious about, we're inviting them to contribute to our understanding.

And then there's humour. Some of the conversations I enjoy most with friends or colleagues involve a certain amount of laughter. An unexpected observation, something faintly ridiculous or taking an idea in an unanticipated direction.

Humour can open up another way of looking at something, challenge an assumption, or our certainty in a different way. And there's something rather lovely about those moments when you find yourself laughing about something that makes no sense to anyone who wasn't part of the conversation.

There is also something relational about admitting that we don't know. It creates the possibility of exploring something together, without either person needing to have the answers. And perhaps that's part of what makes these curiosity conversations so enjoyable. We're discovering something together rather than simply exchanging what we already know.

Making room for curiosity and conversation

When life gets busy, work needs doing, people need our attention, practical problems need solving and responsibilities have a habit of expanding to fill whatever time is available. The conversations we have often reflect that. We talk about what needs organising, what decisions need making, what has happened and what needs to happen next.

It's quite different from having the time and space to follow an interesting thought simply because we're interested in it.

Looking again at Kleon's two simple instructions, I can almost feel the lightness that comes with wondering about something and sharing that curiosity with others.

I've already made a mental decision to make more space for this kind of curiosity. Once I've got the woodchip off the ceiling, that is.

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Inspired by Austin Kleon's book, Steal Like an Artist.

Further exploration

If you're interested in exploring how different theoretical perspectives can deepen our understanding of people and relationships, you might also be interested in Dr Elvin Aydin Keles' Key Perspectives for Psychotherapy programme .