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6.21.2008

Responsibility for curiosity

My curiosity comes and goes on it's own. I cannot make myself be curious. How can you take responsibility for my curiosity?
Advertisers make themselves responsible for customers' curiosity to get them to wonder about and question the value of the products they're pitching. Storytellers and screenwriters take responsibility for hooking their audience and maintaining the plot tension that keeps audiences curious about the eventual outcome. Game designers strive to maintain the players' curiosity about how things will turnout as they play the game different ways.

If the content you're covering is boring me, why not accept my lack of interest as a fact?
I can take your boredom as a mirror of my own condition and learn something about myself. I'll likely discover that I'm approaching you in the mindset of "no further questions your Honor" rather than wondering about you. If I have no curiosity about your frames of reference, it's not possible to provide useful information to you. Rather than take responsibility for your curiosity, I can own OUR curiosity, as if it takes two to be really curious. Then I can watch my curiosity catch on contagiously in our reciprocal arrangement.

How do you avoid sending me on a guilt trip by imply that "I should be curious" about what you're saying?
I stop thinking that control your curiosity and then let go of what comes of my approach. I can seem interested in you and see if that generates your interest in me. I can share how my curiosity explores the topic, finds it fascinating and generates further questions in my mind. I can wonder out loud about issues that need lots more thinking rather than bullet points.

Is that what's going on with these blog posts written in Q&A format?
I wonder if that might be true :-) Perhaps the Q&A format is representative of how the left brain works well with the right brain to receive inspired answers within. Maybe our interchange is setting an example of "being curious" so other's learn by osmosis and imitation of best practices. I wonder if we're making learning highly contagious by showing what happens as you go about asking questions that you've formulated from my replies to your previous question.

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