Availability as healthy curiosity.
This revised and updated article originally appeared in Mars Hill Review 3 Fall 1995: pages 42-49. It is the final essay in a series of three, considering curiosity as an antidote to the narcissism that increasingly plagues our nation, communities, and families.
In the last post, I defined curiosity as a subjective quality of people eager to learn. We also identified several unhealthy kinds of curiosity that give the word a bad name—for example, sticking our noses into someone’s private world in a pushy, inquisitive way. Or curiosity that is obsessed with oneself. Either the self-serving, vigilant curiosity that characterizes the narcissist in our world, or at least the person who has read too many self-help books or YouTube videos on some aspect of themselves or their problems. And these folks can easily ask us for advice, too. And while we should all be very cautious about offering advice at any time, don’t you want to say, “Hey, stop reading!” or “Stop watching videos” for at least a year!
But we also saw there is a healthy kind of curiosity. Curiosity about natural laws has characterized great scientists and inventors. Curiosity about God has captured all sorts of seekers throughout the centuries. It is this kind of curiosity that I wish to display, mainly as it is directed healthily toward others. My wife has become curious about the community habits of sparrows. She loves watching their joy as they crowd into the bird feeder. She has done a bit of research about them because she observed some traits that humans can learn from. I told a story about an interview I helped to conduct for a non-profit organization looking for a certain kind of employee and how one of our interviewees displayed a detrimental lack of curiosity about what we were looking for. But we also said his reaction was a fairly common one. Toward the end, we talked about how, in relationships, we have these moments when we can grow as people through curiosity. We had to prepare for those moments because we can easily miss them. I also promised we would hear from a Danish philosopher who would suggest that the opposite of employing curiosity in the silence of the teachable moment or the moment of creative tension is to fill the air with a word salad--improvising words to fill the terrifying silence that occurs when we realize we don’t know something, like what is happening right now or what to do next--in other words it is possible to chatter away, faking it until we make it perhaps, and thus leaving no room for presence, and the curiosity that is needed to have a healthy relationship with another person.
Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813-1855) said that when individuals chatter to fill the silence, they refuse to engage in the creative tension of relationships, which can bring about good change. In fact, by chattering rather than being silent in curiosity, the applicant siphoned away the essential meaning of the Christian organization to which he applied, which is to be an organization that listens to God.
Availability
Offering presence to invite curiosity is not for the faint of heart. The person who makes themself available pays dearly often..
What does it mean to chatter, according to Kierkegaard? We know what it means when someone chatters. They ramble on in a way that merely fills space and avoids staying on topic or getting to the point. He said chattering “dissolves the passionate disjunction between being silent and speaking. Only the person who can remain silent can speak and act essentially{1}.” There is a rare opportunity in a momentary disruption when caught off-guard, and a previously undetected opportunity to mature or become more human presents itself. Fearing silence because we cannot control what might follow, we fill the air with words. Any words will do. A new expression captures the essence of the useless filler: word salad. A word salad is a perfect metaphor for chatter. There is no point in word salads; they are bulk that fill
us up so that we have no room for the beautiful or substantial. Curiosity is our silence to release control and receive what God and those who serve his purposes offer us in the opportune moments of life.
Presence: Inviting Curiosity
Several times, I have mentioned that there is an unhealthy curiosity that is closer to voyeurism. Indeed, I wonder if curiosity without a relationship is voyeurism: I withhold myself from you but gawk at you. Conversely, I think curiosity accompanied by relationship is presence. By presence, I do not mean mere physical proximity or coexistence with someone else; I mean that my being is brought fully into the moment with another person. All my attention is at the disposal of the one with whom I share that moment. All words that refine the idea of presence seem weak. Most amateur meditators use mindfulness to speak of awareness of their body and its functions. No offense intended, but mindfulness is not enough. Availability is a more comprehensive word. It means I am ready for whatever I discover at this moment. I am committed and at the disposal of whoever shares this moment with me. Enjoying God’s incomparable presence places me at his disposal: “Here I am, Lord. Send me.” Curiosity toward others is more than a pursuit of personal satisfaction. It involves a risk that includes my willingness to serve without distraction. I will suspend my self-serving agenda and attend to you when with you. I cannot demand that others do the same for me, but I long for someone to be interested in at least a small way in how I feel and what I have done. Christian psychologist and counselor Dr. Larry Crabb called that a “taste of heaven.” It is a corollary of the Golden Rule that if curiosity is what I want, then that is what I can give, albeit in a sample form.
The unusual experience of receiving such curiosity is so infrequently experienced in this fallen world that the reaction to offered presence is instructive. Such presence is like a knock on the door of one’s soul. Suppose one answers the knock with reciprocal curiosity. In that case, there is communion, a sweet taste of the fellowship for which God created us. In the case of the job applicant, the knock was unanswered-just as it often is in the counseling office, at the dinner table, in the church auditorium. The panelist was beneficially present by reporting her experience with the applicant. The applicant may have been startled by this presence, either because it was hateful to him in its exposure of something he thought to hide or because he has lived life ignorant of presence, thinking it is just sharing physical proximity. Twentieth-century French philosopher Gabriel Marcel said that the goal of offering presence is to bring about an encounter:
Encounter can only be accomplished at the level of presence. Suppose it is to be an authentic encounter. In that case, it cannot be limited to coexistence at a particular point in a particular moment. Such coexistence is only a matter of “being there.” There is a genuine encounter only if there is being with. {2}
Mere coexistence in a relationship occurs when one is physically in a room but does not participate creatively with the other. The word participate is meaningful here because to participate with others, to be present, we must cross the artificial barriers we have erected between ourselves and others.
Participation is made concrete and meaningful through curiosity. In the case of the interview, the panelist creatively participated in presence with the applicant rather than merely choosing to coexist. Coexistence would have taken the form of essential questions, such as “What is your experience?” or “How would you do such and such?” The panelist’s presence, however, went to more meaningful places in the applicant’s existence by seeking to understand his experience at that moment. This seeking is curiosity. The panelist might easily have said, “At this moment, your interview is telling us something about you that perhaps you want to hide from us but cannot. And if you cannot hide this here and now, what must you be like toward your wife and family, who must endure your pose when you are not seeking to impress them at all?” This curiosity about how their closest relationship might experience them is presence because it fully engages with another in the moment by refusing to ignore the obvious. It is creative because it allows one to deceive oneself no longer. When the pose of competence to manage one’s life fails, one can only depend on God. Curiosity flourishes when we see presence as a gift bridging the gap loneliness creates. Still, it dies when placed on the cold hearth of self-protection.
You may be thinking about the same thing I have always struggled with about this presence, which is more like readiness or availability. Won’t people take advantage of me if I put myself at their disposal? What will become of time for me? Those are fair questions.
Curiosity and the Battle for the Soul
The offering of the gift of presence to another so that they might have an opportunity to respond with curiosity is the vocation of fearless warriors. But people mistake the gentle knocking of a relationship for an enemy’s attack rather than a friend’s wounds. Being present for another calls for courage and perseverance because one is engaged in the battle for a soul.
No one battles more for my soul by offering presence and inviting curiosity than my wife. When I told my wife the story of my delayed flight and my profound loneliness, a knowing smile passed kindly over her face. The lack of curiosity I received from my travel companions was like the lack of interest I demonstrated toward my wife when she knocked on the door of my soul. Often, she has lovingly highlighted the obvious in my life, only to be kept (as have others) at arm’s length. Rather than respond with curiosity, I have often sought to eradicate the silence of tension between us by insistent defensiveness: “I’m not like that at all...You misunderstood me...let me explain my position.” I never raise my voice; with calm logic and lengthy explanations, I bludgeon the very one who does battle for me. Safe behind the door of my soul, I often answer the knock of a relationship with an angry snarl.
No, offering presence to invite curiosity is not for the faint of heart. The person who makes themself available pays dearly often. I remember the quip of a middle-aged woman as we sat in the airport terminal, so far from home and one another: “This is hell,” she said. How I shared that sentiment!
I realized I longed for someone to answer my knock with a healthy curiosity on that plane in Manchester. I tasted my own medicine; I experienced what it felt like to live in a world where few answer the knock of freely offered relationships. How great is the love of God that he would send the Creator himself to a people without curiosity? How wonderful is the One who would dare to intrude on our defensive indifference and pay such a price to offer a relationship to us?
Jesus said, “Behold, I stand at the door and knock…”
{1} Søren Kierkegaard, Two Ages (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1971), 97.
{2} Gabriel Marcel, “Reply to Gene Reeves,” The Philosophy of Gabriel Marcel ( LaSalle, Ill.: Open Court, 1984), 273-274.
