What is Curiosity?

Curiosity sets us apart from other species. It allows us to develop our intellect and invent new tools that make our life easier. Curiosity is not only the engine for material progress, but also closely correlated to individual mental and physical health, intelligence, happiness, and positive outlook on life in general. Curiosity in us is innate and can anchor us in the present while we are deeply involved in investigating, researching, and exploring. It makes us feel more awake, more alive, more passionate and has a rejuvenating effect. Considering all these positive qualities that accompany curiosity, one can only wonder why we don't cultivate and harvest its positive energy much more. It seems that with age, curiosity is slipping away and with it a lot of fun, passion, empathy, happiness and a special connection to the world that we live in. Wouldn't our lives be a lot more interesting, if we regularly dared to try new things, never stopped challenging ourselves to learn new skills and pick up new interests? Wouldn't we feel much happier in our neighborhoods, communities, and towns, if people were a little more curious about their surroundings, each other, the world, big and small ideas, and all the infinite possibilities in our communities that we currently leave unexplored?

In babies and toddlers curiosity is the driving force. They rely on it to learn all skills necessary to survive in their habitat. Constant observation helps them to figure out how things work. Little children touch things to understand what they are, what they are made of, what they can do, and what they can be useful for. They play around with them in as many different ways as possible. Every object is worth discovering and exploring in the same meticulous way, because it will help with comparing all new things to these first ones and will allow them to make sense of their world. Parents and caregivers know that the acquisition of knowledge and curiosity are intrinsically connected and encourage their little ones actively to explore and discover. But as they master the basic skills of walking, talking, eating, and understanding of how human interaction works, they become integrated into a broader learning system, in which curiosity gradually becomes marginalized.

Once institutionalized learning takes place, children remain encouraged to explore, but in much more directed ways. As they gradually become part of institutionalized learning, students' curiosity is just one aspect among many that dictate the curriculum and prepare the students for important standardized assessments. Due to teachers' performance pressures, kids' curiosity often becomes discouraged as it can slow down or even disrupt teaching. Institutionalized learning at times backs away from hands-on investigation in favor of a reproduction of knowledge in pre-selected, pre-approved packages. As a well-known study of divergent thinking of 2011 showed, schooling actually has a negative effect on creative thinking and creativity in kids. One specific experiment asked Kindergarteners to come up with as many uses for a paper clip as possible and the average 5-year old could think of 200. When the experiment was repeated with kids a few years older, the results were sobering: on average these older kids were only able to imagine 5 uses for a paper clip in contrast to 200 imagined by 5-year-olds.

As adults with steady jobs and more static lives, curiosity and imagination recede even further. Unless we perform a diverse set of tasks or have jobs in creative fields like research, design or the arts, we generally do not have many chances to follow our curiosity or interests. Considering that 80% of adults in the U.S. admitted to "hating their jobs" in 2010 and spent endless hours on tasks without being positively emotionally engaged, they live a rather monotonous lives. While some individuals may manage well accepting this dull outlook thinking that it is part of being an adult, the majority of us becomes discontent, bored, and frustrated not only with work-life, but also with themselves, their relations, and their surroundings. Without taking the extra time or effort to make our lives more interesting by doing something different and incorporating curiosity into the little stretches of free time that we do have, we tend to become lazy and depressed. We accept the social expectations that adulthood means lots of responsibilities and obligations and don't expect much excitement.

Last year, research confirmed that the brain of curious individuals worked much better and enhanced the individual's ability to learn information easier than those of the less curious people. They found that when curiosity is piqued, new information can be best learned and turned it into useful facts. It will also be memorized for much more extended period of time than for those who are less curious. In addition, the investigators found that when curiosity is stimulated, there is increased activity in the brain circuit related to reward. When curiosity motivated learning, there was increased activity in the hippocampus, a brain region that is important for forming new memories, as well as increased interactions between the hippocampus and the reward circuit. So curiosity recruits the reward system, and interactions between the reward system and the hippocampus seem to put the brain in a state in which you are more likely to learn and retain information, even if that information is not of particular interest to you. This could be useful information in the classroom or the workplace, when learning what might be considered boring material could be enhanced if teachers or managers are able to harness the power of curiosity about something they are naturally motivated to learn.

Big market leaders like Google or Apple have long integrated this knowledge into their companies. They have elevated the role of curiosity, imagination, and creativity and allowed employee's to have a more flexible work schedule which leads to more free mental space that in turn encourages and embraces different, innovative ways of thinking that can lead to great inventions. Google for example has allowed employees to spend 20% of their work time on projects of personal interest. Giving employees control over their time and how they approach a project, the management gives up control, but gains loyalty, passion, and furthers the talent of their employees, who in turn engage with the project on a much deeper level than they otherwise would. Google understands not only that unstructured time, inspiring surroundings, and minimal supervision are necessary for more creative output, but also that monotony poses a main obstacles to innovation. In the last couple of years, many other business leaders have confirmed that the specific skills that the job market will require in the near future cannot be known for sure at this point, but the qualities that many companies will look for are creativity, adaptability, and critical thinking skills, which are most likely found in humanities or art majors.

Despite the popularity and wide distribution of these findings (also to be found in some great TED talks), the current trend unfortunately continues to favor the opposite. At universities more and more funding has been cut for the arts and humanities, where the instructional focus lies on the development of critical and free thinking skills, as well as creativity. Japan has taken this to the extreme as the recent announcement by Minister of Education Hakubun Shimomura shows in which he said that all Japanese universities will stop accept entering students into programs of social sciences, law, and humanities. In the U.S. and many other nations (like Britain) the government are partial to STEM subjects (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) over the arts, social sciences, and humanities, which resulted in massive budget cuts for the latter. While this decision is clearly driven by economic concerns, it may have a much larger impact. Not only will it further pre-select areas of interest to humanity and thus limit the direction in which curiosity and imagination are allowed to operate, but it will ultimately also create a world in which even more people favor a calculable reality. If the broad majority of higher educated people worked in STEM fields, it would alter our world significantly, but not in a positive way. In the end, it would be a less colorful and far less diverse place, where most of our interests center around similar things. It would become a static and grim world of decreasing tolerance for alternative ways of thinking, being, and approaching life.

The power of curiosity, which demands an open mind and is inherently connected to hope, can transform us and should not be sidelined in our lives no matter our age. Life is an adventure and can remain such in all stages of life, if we stay curious. If we dare to look at the world beyond our daily framework, we can only benefit from it. Acquiring new skills, challenging ourselves to learn, we view life from different perspectives, which helps us to remain energized and awake. When exposed to the new, we --like children-- reevaluate the old, the traditional and have the chance to create something new. Not only does it add to our basic sum of experiences, but it also allows us to rethink our own identity. This may be especially valuable in an age when many people are unhappy with their jobs and we are regularly confronted with horrible violence committed by individuals who struggle to find a place in this world. Engaging people, arousing and channeling their curiosity may create a way to transform their frustrations and anger into something positive and lead them to reconnect with their peers and their communities.

What Exactly is Time?

As we prepared and celebrated my older daughter’s birthday last week, I was thinking back to all the milestone moment in her life, wondering how we made it this far, and ELEVEN years passed by so quickly. Isn’t it strange? We have proof that it has been eleven years, but still it seemed so much shorter (even though some of the days felt that they would never end).  Why do we perceive time as expanding sometimes and standing still at others? What makes it go faster and what slows it down? Which factors play into changes in its perception? Time is never the same. It seems to be tied to emotions and it also has to do with one’s stage in life. Since Einstein we know that time is relative. It changes according to perception and according to the system that it is bound to. But what does that even mean? And how does perception of time change over the course of one’s life?

For children, time seems to consist of long periods of waiting for specific activities and events to occur. They focus on events and developments in the future. They get excited and try to figure out how long they have to wait before those events are finally there. As soon as they can, they ask e.g. if it is their birthday yet, how many days until their favorite holiday, and when will they see grandma again. Their focus on events in the future converts big chunks of the present into waiting time. The past is not at all interesting for them. There are lots of hope, dreams, and aspirations tied to their perception of they future.  They dream about what they want to be, where and how they want to live, who they may consider marrying, etc.

When we become parents, the focus shifts abruptly, as our lives suddenly get dominated not only by the needs of others, but also by the shift from the focus on the future (awaiting the day the baby will be born) to the present (baby needs to be fed and cleaned, etc.). Work has to be accomplished in the here and now so that the child has a bright, healthy, and promising future. The parents then await the child to reach their developmental milestones, but their own focus is the present. Events of the future have to be considered, planned, and executed. At work everything is about getting the task done that needs to be accomplished at that specific moment, deadlines haunt us. At home it is not much different. All the little things have to be prepared, breakfasts served, lunches and snacks packed, laundry cleaned, etc. If a birthday is approaching, like in our house recently, not only the gifts, the cupcakes, the birthday cake have to be organized and delivered to the appropriate places at the correct times, but most likely a party will be held to mark the milestone, which also entails careful preparation. While children probably only have an awareness of the upcoming party, parents are well aware of all the work that leads up to the special event. So in this stage of life we have to be focused on the present. Often we get overwhelmed because it seems that there is not enough time to accomplish everything that needs to be done. Lots of people feel that they are “running out of time” or “have no time.”

As we age and our kids leave us to live their own lives, we tend to live more and more in the past, remembering good and bad times in our childhood and thinking back to the memorable days when our own children reached their specific milestones. Focus shifts to the past and time starts to be measured by the time SINCE something happened: “five days since my daughter called me” or “two weeks since I saw them”. Time is measured in the intervals that are between the visits with family and friends and time spent together. Again, like in childhood, there are long stretches of waiting time that are not filled with so many aspirations for the future as memories of the past.

We all know well about the physical changes through which the passing of time manifests itself. For children, these signs are hopefully awaited (first lost tooth, first beard hair, first signs of development) as they signify the entering into a new phase in life. They want to grow and become full members of society. For parents, it is a dreaded shift, that people are determined to stall as long as possible or to fight head-on. Who wants to have grey hair, an increasing waistline, and wrinkles? There is a multi-billion dollar industry making profits from us all not willing to accept the process of aging, but that may be a good theme for a different blog post.

How we experience the passing of time is not only linked to our stage in life, but also to all kinds of emotions. When we are having a good time for example, time appears to pass very quickly, “it flies”. And when we are bored or waiting for something to happen is seems to drag endless or even “stands still.” But intense emotions seem to have an even more profound effect on our way of experiencing time. When we grieve the death of a loved one or suffer from a break-up of a long relationship, we only feel grief and sadness. It consumes us. There is no room for anything else. The same thing is true for the opposite emotions. When we are completely happy for example, laughing with our kids, rolling on the floor, we are consumed by happiness. We BECOME that emotion and time seems to stand still. We do not think about anything else, not the future, not the past, we just completely live in the moment. Similarly, when we immerse ourselves in an activity that we love to do (for some it may be their job, for others it may be a hobby), we tend to forget things around us and completely live in the moment. As if space and time become irrelevant. (Just think about new lovers who seem to forget time.) So, perception of time, it seems,  also has to do with our undivided attention, but it also has to do with how well we immerse ourselves in the activity that we are engaged in at the moment.

Studies have shown that meditation can alter the perception of time by changing mechanisms in the brain. While meditating, the outside world is systematically blocked out and the focus shifts to inside the body and the mind. As a result, influences that usually distract us, are contained before they even get to us. This not only improves our mental and physical health, but also can adjust our perception of time through relaxation and re-shifting focus. Time then “slows down” again. Buddhist monks for example are able to conduct so focused meditations (and slow their breaths) that sitting still and focusing on the inside, they believe, allows them to see a glimpse of the divine that may allow them to escape the everlasting cycle of rebirth and life. That means that focus, in a way, can help us escape the boundaries of time. The same mechanism is at work while practicing yoga. By remaining in yoga poses, slowing one's breaths and concentrating on the muscles used to remain still in the poses, focus can also be shifted and time perception can be altered subsequently.

So what do we get from this? Besides me finding it extremely interesting to think about, it may help us when we get caught up in daily rushes and worries. Maybe when we “run out of time” it is good to stop for a minute and consider the moment that we live in and refocus on the important things. In the end, time is all we have in life. The more memorable moments we create for us and for others, the more beautiful memories we can look back on and contemplate once we are old and have more time.