Curiosity vs Judgement
She said “I’m going to tell you two words and I want you to define them. I’ll give them to you separately. The first word is curiosity.”
I’m getting used to being asked questions, still not so comfortable in answering them. They make me think, I don’t want to answer them. Sometimes I ask why, as I did this time and she told me “I’ll tell you after you define them.”
Curiosity, that should’ve been easy enough, people call me curious all the time, it’s one of my traits. But I can’t describe it. “Tell me what you’d tell someone who didn’t know what it means.” She says. I’m still not budging, muttering perhaps, stalling. This is a hard question. I don’t like hard questions. They make me dig a little deeper than I like.
I said:
curiosity is when you want to know more about something and you’re not satisfied until you feel that you know all about whatever that something is. Question after question gets asked.
Then I got the next word, judgment. I didn’t like that word, it’s harsh.
Me:
well, it can be good or bad. I remember telling my mom after I wrecked my car for the second time that I had made a bad judgment call. (And I also said something about how as a Christian I’m not supposed to “judge” but that we’re really some of the most judgmental people out there and this lead to another conversation to be later discussed in another blog post)
Her:
what about open/closed mindedness with these words?
Me:
well, judgement is close minded. You make up your mind, and that’s it the end of story, you’re not willing to hear anymore about it, your mind isn’t going to be changed. A wall has gone up. And curiosity is open minded because you’re exploring.
I guess I did well enough after that because I then found out why the words were being asked. She had checked her blood earlier in the day and it was I don’t remember what number, but I frowned. I judged that number. It was “bad” in my mind. Not great considering the amount of exercise she had gotten, again, in my mind. And she said, “it’s actually ok” and I was cool with that.
She asked me about what curiosity and judgement was because she wanted to explain something to me about her and her numbers. She explained to me that instead of judging the numbers we should be more curious about them. What caused that number, what could’ve been done differently to not get that kind of number.
In my brain it’s kindof like Thomas Edison and how he learned more than a thousand ways not to make a light bulb but eventually found one way that was successful. And that’s what I think she was trying to get at. In being curious about our numbers we learn; instead of just saying “oh that’s good” or “oh that’s bad”. And being an athlete, it’s important to be curious because that’s how I’m going to learn how to handle my diabetes when it comes time to participating in big events.
I’m going to learn the thousands of ways to get a number I may not like, but in being curious, I’ll find the way to get the number I do like while participating in whatever activities I may choose.
Leave a Reply