I often hear people say they dislike airports, and how stressful the process is. I somewhat enjoy them. My curiosity and imagination are the main reasons. While in the airport, I am in this building filled with various characters from every corner of the earth, and in 24 hours we will all be in a different timezone. It's a building filled with infinite stories, and a sea of language. Where else do you find that other than London? Curiosity is what fuels me creatively– to see a world outside my and look closer–not to judge, but to witness. That is the art of curiosity. 

Sometimes I wonder if we are all constantly consumed by their own worlds that have become uninterested in one another's. But, If that were true we wouldn’t watch reality tv or keep up with celebrity gossip. Our individualism has caused us to separate ourselves from those we share spaces with to a point where being interested is considered being invasive. And the result is that we are afraid to be curious. We guard our inner worlds in glass cases and then ask “what happened to having community?” Every now and then I meet someone who speaks with curiosity, not necessarily towards me, but towards life itself. Someone who wonders why and how this is the way it is, and for a moment I am nourished again by the presence of kinfolk. 

What I notice is that curiosity is put aside for the people with accolades, those are the people we deem worthy of knowing. Only that which has social proof is deemed valuable. We know where our favourite celebrities grew up, and how many kids they have and, and yet we don’t know our neighbours' full names, what they do for work or their children's names. 

We all have stories within us, if not then you are not a living and breathing being. Being present and witnessing the world around us is important. Our world becomes more divided everyday because we haven't allowed ourselves to hold space for coexisting truths. And that can only begin when those truths are  held with curiosity instead of judgement.

A lot of mistakes I haven't made are because I listened to people’s stories and remembered them when I was met with the same choices. We once passed stories from generations. Now we read and listen to stories of people who have died, and say “how I wish they were still alive”  “I’d be interested in knowing their thoughts now in the current social climate”  No one is as interesting as the dead. Only then are they worthy of our curiosity. You may hear of someone who passed and suddenly you have all these questions “What did they do? How did they pass? Did they have kids?”  If only we were as curious about the living. 

Curiosity is an artform that takes practice, discomfort and a willingness to let go. Similar to how in theatre good acting is not acting at all. It is the willingness to truthfully experience an alternative reality as though it is your own. Being curious is about loosening the grip on our own reality, to softly hold someone else’s.

This is what I see when I interview people. Some of us are waiting for our moment to finally be on the receiving end of curiosity, and I feel it too. We all know that warm and cushiony feeling of being in spaces that allow us to safely exist and share our inner worlds and it be received with care, with genuine curiosity and a willingness to look through the lens in which you see the world. I crave being in these spaces, and that's why community building is important to me. My vision is to reignite curiosity into the communities. I want to exist in spaces where sharing a part of myself does not feel like extraction and consumption, but rather that I am experienced with care and safety, as a full human being. And I'm tired of searching for these kinds of spaces and so I am working on creating them.

I invite you to take a moment to fully experience someone in your life, ask one more question, witness with openness, and listen to them with curiosity. You may be surprised by what you discover about yourself through them.