CURIOSITY UNLEASHED: THE PATH TO DEEPER CONNECTION

How curious are you about the differing beliefs of those others? Are you able to engage in meaningful conversations and hold space for those differences, even when they challenge your own perspective? In this episode of The Unsided Podcast, I delve into the transformative power of curiosity and the importance of making room for others’ stories. Together, we’ll unpack the barriers that prevent us from being fully present and explore how an open mind and heart can lead to a richer, more nuanced understanding of others.

Let’s get into it.

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

This is Unsided. Unsided. Hey everybody, it's Kristofer. Welcome back to another episode of Unsided. I'm always happy to be here in conversation with you. I hope wherever you are, maybe you're on a walk, maybe you're having your coffee, maybe you're in your car. I hope you have a moment to just sit with me and think. Maybe you will think about something differently after we have this time together. And maybe I will. Because as odd as it sounds when I'm talking to you, I do imagine that you're sitting here with me. And I imagine perhaps some of the questions or thoughts or opposing points of view that you might have. And then I can work through those thoughts in my head as well. Because the most interesting thing to me about life, really, other than you know, loving the people that I love and doing the things I love to do, is to expand my mind and try to see another person's point of view. Try to look at a situation or a an opinion or a story that someone's telling and think, what are the origins of that? Listen, I know that not everybody is inherently out for everyone's best interest. And there are plenty of people in my life who have accused me of being naive and looking too much for the good in people, and that perhaps I should, there's some people I just need to kind of wash my hands of and move on. And there are people in my life that I've done that. But it's not after extensively trying to understand their point of view. And the question that comes up for me when I think about what it means to really have compassion for another person's point of view, or curiosity, let's let's not say compassion, let's say curiosity, is I I genuinely don't understand why everybody doesn't have that curiosity. It doesn't mean that you have to agree. It doesn't mean that you have to ever ask the question again or that you have to let somebody into your life, but I do think we have an obligation societally to not take statements and opinions and stories at face value, especially if we're seeing them through media. If we're not having a one-on-one experience with a person. My kids, I think that they probably have lost count of the times that they've gotten into the car after school and made a statement about a person, either a person they know or a person that they've heard of or something they've seen online, and a very bold statement. I believe this about them, or they are that way. And my question is always, how do you know? Have you talked to them? And sometimes, you know, it's their friend. They have. But oftentimes it's second or third hand information. And if it's on the internet or social media, we know that's pretty curated. Right? Like it, I always say, why do you choose to believe that story? Have you done your research? Have you heard from multiple sources? I was just talking to my younger child the other day, and I said, How many sources have you heard that from? I don't even remember what it was she said. But she espoused a big opinion about someone or something. Again, too many times to count that we've had these conversations, but my drive is always to push them not to take regurgitated information or secondhand information and make that a basis of fact for themselves. And really, isn't that the world that we live in? Isn't that what we're doing every day? I sat down to watch the Melania documentary today, just out of curiosity. I'm always curious. I'll watch a documentary about anybody. I'll watch pretty much any subject matter as long as it's not too violent. I don't like uh terrible amounts of violence. But if I'm learning something, if I'm gonna take a peek into someone's life, I'll watch. And I knew that going into watching this documentary that it was going to be completely curated. Like, probably that's the definition of the word. What is this? It's a it's a political statement. It's a it's meant to deliver a certain message about her and the incoming administration at the time when it was released, or I don't even remember when it was released, but it's about her first 20 days or building up to the second term for her husband. And anyway, this is not about the documentary, but I was watching it and my husband came in and he was like, Oh, I don't want to see that. I can't even listen to her voice. And I I get it, because he is an immigrant, we are queer, he's from Lebanon. This administration doesn't really it's we're not big fans in our household based upon policies and our reaction to those policies. Not because we know President Trump or Melania or any of these people. But this I thought was interesting, and I hadn't watched it before because I honestly didn't want to give it any sort of ratings boost, but I thought I'd I'd be curious. And as I'm watching it, and and he leaves the room because he doesn't want to watch it, and I don't blame him, I thought, I wonder how many people are sitting down to watch a movie like this and have curiosity about why they made this movie, why this administration is where they are, why she is where she is. And I don't want to go into that because I don't really want to talk about them or that here. But as an example of a person that I personally probably don't align with, and I certainly don't align with her husband and his administration's policies. Would I sit down at dinner with her? Would I be curious to know her origin story? She was talking about her mom, seeing pictures of her family, again, curated, but she's a human being. Right? She's a person who has a story, who wakes up every day, who has beliefs. I'm curious about that. And maybe I don't like that story, and maybe I don't like the beliefs that lead her or any other person to live their life the way they live them. But I feel like I have an obligation to be curious. I want my children to be curious in the same way, especially if they hear something that is off-putting or negative. And that's why I watch the documentary. Hear so many negative things, particularly here where I live in Los Angeles, and I tend to travel in groups of people who are more uh I hate the word liberal and conservative and all of that, but who are not aligned with perhaps what her and the administration represent, right? So I'm not getting a lot of people who are going to sit down and watch that with me. But I I was watching it and and I didn't come away with any new ideas about her. In fact, the documentary was so particularly curated. There's that word again, but I don't have a better word for you at this moment. But it was a piece of PR and propaganda, if you will, as I think most kinds of really most documentaries are. I mean, honestly, I if you're a documentary filmmaker, I apologize, but we everybody looks at something through a lens. Everybody comes through a perspective. There are some that I've seen that are actually pretty objective, but particularly today with social media and the barrier to entry for filmmaking is being really low. You can have an opinion about anything and you can make it into something and you can put it out into the world and you can start a conversation. And I'm always going to be curious about those conversations. I'm not, I do not watch the news anymore. I don't read the news generally. Um, if I do, it's generally not U.S. news. I'm looking at the world news for what I somehow have convinced myself as a more objective perspective. Um, and I think sometimes it is, sometimes it's not. But I'm not so curious about these stories that people build for a specific audience, but I'm curious about the why. You know, I don't need to sit down and watch every documentary. I don't need to look at someone's social media page because I want to believe something about them. I don't need to watch someone tell their story or read their book because I need to believe something about them, but I'm curious why people are motivated to live the lives they live. And I think that is missing from our conversations today, which is why I started this podcast. And I'll be really honest with you, there are a lot of subjects I want to talk about that I even shy away from because I either don't know that I have all the information to have an opinion, or I feel like having too specific of an opinion or tackling too tough of a subject makes me a part of that problem. So I really think about what I'm gonna talk about before I talk about it and I try to have some sort of lived experience. You know, if we were sitting down and talking right now, this is the moment when I would say, tell me something about you. And even if you start off with a topic or a sentence or a statement that I absolutely disagree with or doesn't align with me, in fact, especially if you do that, I'm probably going to become more curious about why. And it doesn't make me uncomfortable, generally. I will exit a conversation if it feels like somebody's not actually having a conversation. They're just spouting kind of point after point after point, and it becomes a bit of a lecture on who they are and how we should believe the same thing. And it and that happens sometimes, particularly when politics come up. If you're trying to convince me of your point of view, I'm probably going to lose interest. But if you're willing to share with me your point of view and your experience, and I can do the same, even if we don't find common ground, not only is my curiosity more satisfied and am I more interested, and do I feel like I it's a safer space to have a conversation, but I'm going to walk away from that conversation and hopefully you are as well with real knowledge, firsthand knowledge of something. And that's where growth begins, where understanding begins, where where we bridge the gap in our experiences. There's all these buzzwords like lived experiences. And I don't I don't actually like that one very much because I had a particular person in my life who used that a lot, kind of as a rage bait thing in our relationship, but in the re-embracing of it, our lived experience, the the experiences that we live and have lived over the course of our life are valid for us. Right? They don't have to be valid for anybody else, but they're valid for us. And I would like you to be curious about what brought me here, and I would like to be curious about you. But we are in this social media world, this 24-hour news cycle world, the world where the barrier to entry is pretty low for creating content, like I said, where it just kind of feels like every conversation is an opportunity for someone else to propagandize, for someone else to try to sway someone else's opinion. And as a result, we just stop talking to people outside of the circles that believe the same way we believe. We stop having those real critical thought conversations. And my kids, you know, when we talk about it, I feel like they're expanding their minds a bit. And I do feel like they ask questions more. And I feel like my harping on it constantly is hopefully helping them to be curious, more curious and less judgmental. But I don't know if everybody else is doing that with their children. I don't know if they're doing that within their families. You know, I I have half of my family in Oklahoma and and some of them who believe very differently than me. But the moment they say something that feels either foreign to me or feels like something I just can't agree with, I'm gonna go further into the conversation. And isn't that where we start to connect? I feel like I've talked about this before, but once I was sitting at at lunch with a one of my great aunts, and she said to me as a Christian woman, and we were talking about me and my husband, she said, I love you. Some version of I love you, but the Bible doesn't give us a place for you. But I love you. Do you know what? That's enough for me. Not just because she's my family, but I don't need her to understand, I need her to be curious about her thoughts, curious about me, and curious enough and interested enough to keep the connection going. Now I have other members of my family who aren't willing to have that conversation, or other people in my life that we're not gonna keep a connection. And that's okay. But isn't that silly? Isn't that silly of anybody on any side to shut the mind down, to shut the curiosity down? Tell me. Tell me why. Why, other than to gain control or power, which is a big why, and a lot of what runs our world is economic power, moral superiority, political power. And that is not created generally in the structure we've been working with, not just in our country, but around the world in various places, that doesn't come from curiosity and connection. It comes from division. So I understand why it's happening more and more, and I understand why the tools of social media and media in general and the news cycle, I understand why, and I've talked about this a lot, why they're used to divide us, but I don't understand why people can't wake up to a greater conversation, to something more. And when I say that, it sounds naive because again, I've just I've just stated that I understand why theoretically, that it's for power, it's for control, it's ego. I get that. But I don't understand how people are not inherently curious to question their own belief systems or to learn about a belief system that they don't agree with and really understand the origins of that and why someone believes that. I don't understand why people's minds and hearts are closed to that. It makes absolutely no sense to me. And sometimes that puts me or has put me at a disadvantage in my life because I'm not willing to step on or over somebody to get what I want. I never have been. I'm not willing to dismiss someone's opinion entirely just because I don't agree with it. In fact, quite the opposite. So, what's different about my brain than many other people's brains? And I'm not coming from a place of superiority here, I assure you, because I have people around me who do think the same way, and I know there are lots of wonderful people out in the world who are inherently curious and who do want to bridge that gap. But I would say when I find those people, you know, it's more rare. It doesn't happen as often. That's another reason I started this podcast, because I can create that for myself. I can pretend you're here with me. Like I said, and I can have that conversation. And when I do find someone who's willing to go deep, especially if they don't believe the same way as me, boy, I'm really fascinated now. Because I'm gonna learn something for sure. And and that thing that I learned might be that I really, really don't agree with you. But it's also going to tell me if you're open enough and self-aware enough, why you believe the way you believe. Let me give you an example. My husband is Lebanese Persian. He was raised in Liberia and West Africa for a good part of his childhood, and then he went to Beirut for a while, and then he immigrated to Canada on his own some years later. And I had been working in Canada and got my PR and was spending more time there for a while. And so we met on common ground in Canada as immigrants, but we had very different lived experiences. We had very different lives. He's also younger than me. And so he was born in a different time, in a different place. And the things that we had that connected us that were common to us were our love of certain kinds of music, our love of nature, our love of, you know, of various things. But our experience, our belief systems, totally different. So we had to be really curious about each other. Okay, that's all well and good and fine. There's lots of people who meet who come from different places and they form a strong bond. And then when we came to America, a new kind of uh curiosity had to grow in order for us to deal with some of the hiccups that I don't even think I expected. And one of them was this idea of the American dream and what the American dream means to different people based on the experience that they've had either here in America or elsewhere. And what I came to learn is that he, growing up in Africa and in Beirut, had a very specific idea of this American dream that had been sold to him. And I, as a man who grew up in Oklahoma, here in America, had an entirely different idea of that American dream. In fact, I I didn't think of the American dream as being real at all. I always kind of knew that the American dream was made up, and that was only for certain people of certain classes and certain skin colors, certain sexualities, certain genders. That's just something that I had known, but not something that he had understood because his lived experience had been outside of the country, and there was a certain perception of people from those countries that he was aware of that America had, but still there's this idea of the American dream. If I go to America, America is a place of opportunity where people are connected and people care. And I'm this is not a takedown of America, not at all. But once he got here and I saw him start to realize that the beliefs he held about America came from misinformation, came from taking these stories that he had seen and these tales that he had heard literally and forming an opinion about America that was not the truth because he had never been here. And I had never spent that kind of time, I'd never been in a relationship, now a marriage with an immigrant. Uh I had never I had never thought about what other people think about the American dream. I had only known my experience, and he had only known his experience. And we started to butt heads a little bit, kind of unexpectedly, because I know how to operate within the American system. And I know the American system is not set up for everybody to succeed. I I I've known this for a long time. I knew it even more clearly when I first went to Canada to work. Because in Canada, there's a certain amount of socialization of the government and funds. And in Canada, if you can't rise up, there will be a system to support you. And again, I'm not extolling the virtues of Canada. I'm just saying, in America, my experience of America, even as a white man, a queer right man, but a white man, has been that America's not going to give you anything that you're not willing to work for. And if you do take things that you don't work for, people are going to look down at you. Right. And in order to have the privilege to have those things, to have the opportunities, to get the education, to work towards something, you're probably going to need to be. Well, let me back up. You're not going to need to be, but it's probably going to be easier if you're white, if you're a man, and if you have some sort of means.

unknown 20:03

Right?

Speaker 1 20:03

We in America love these stories of people kind of rising up out of their situation and their circumstance, essentially rising up out of their caste system. Because America does have its own kind of unspoken caste system. Some people literally can never rise up. Maybe because they haven't been given the education, they haven't been given the opportunity, because there's been multi-generational uh oppression. Well, definitely because. But without going into all of that, I began to realize that he was watching his idea of the American dream crumble, and I was being faced with the reality of the bubble that I had been living in. And I was really looking at him and not understanding the stress he was feeling. So I had to get more and more curious about his experience of life before I met him, what had formed him, why he believed the way he believed. And I had to get more curious about my own. And it's still an ongoing conversation. We've we have come a long way. All of this is to say that if we had not been in a relationship and had not had the dedication to become more and more curious about each other, the tensions between us would have risen because he was starting to become resentful of what he was seeing happening around him, not necessarily to him, but the fear, particularly after the new administration took over, the fear that was instilled in people who were not from America, and particularly people who are not Caucasian. That's been a very real thing. Whatever side of the political aisle you are on, it has been a real thing in America for a long, long, long time, well before this administration. But America likes to put out an idea that the dream is there for everyone. Believe very much that we create our own realities, but let's get real. There are some people that have to climb a much bigger ladder to get there, and other people who are born into this idea of the dream. But the dream is that you work hard and you rise up and you make something out of your life. And I can tell you as a white man from America that I did that. I come from, you know, family who some of them have done just fine for themselves, and they're all white. They're all either in South Dakota or Oklahoma, pretty much. So they're in the middle of America. And I'm a boy, and so the world was kind of always at my fingertips. But we were also not financially well off. And I had a lot of addiction in my family. I had a lot of people who fell down, including my own father, people who couldn't meet their potential. So I was kind of applauded as I grew up for rising above. But it wasn't a dream. I wasn't thinking of it as a dream. I was thinking this is my life, right? But again, in my little bubble, right? Not realizing even then, when I was younger, and even until I went to Canada later, that I really had been kind of isolated in this. And then my husband, now husband, who came here, expecting to run into the American dream and realizing, oh, wait a minute, this might not be available to me. I'm gonna have to shift the way I think about it. So we had to get super curious with each other about the pain points, about the injustices that he was seeing that were shocking to him here in America. And also he had to be curious enough to listen to me share my experience of why America is the way that it is, or why at least my life has been the way that it's been, and how he can access that, and which things uh actually aren't true, which belief systems, which ideas of the American dream actually really never were real. America is not the land of the free. We all know this. America is the land of those people who have access to opportunity and possibility, and very often that favors Caucasian people of a higher economic status. That's just who we are. That's just our country. And we have a lot of people trying to break out of that and push us in another direction. And and I I feel like I'm going off on a tangent, which, if you were here with me, hopefully you would be going off on that tangent with me as well. But I want to bring this back around. That's an example of when I had to get, and we had to get really curious because we didn't inherently understand the experience of life that each of us had had. And we had a reason to commit, we were in love with each other. We loved the very humanity of each other. But it it got hard for a minute. Because even through that love, there were there were ways he saw the world and ways I saw the world that were not aligned. And that would leave us kind of jaw agape thinking, how could you believe that way? But I would argue that even if he wasn't my husband and someone that I love very much, I still would like to think that I would still be curious to understand why another person or group of people believe the way they believe. But what it takes is that other person also having the same interest and curiosity. The point is, if you can't sit down with somebody, whether you love them, whether you're close to them, whether you're they're a complete stranger, if you can't sit down with someone and be curious about who they are and where they came from, what even are you doing? You just want to make money? You just want to protect your own? Okay, fine, that's your valid choice. But I'm I would ask you if that were you, why? And if your answer is I really don't care about anybody else, why? Yeah, I was that kid. I was that kid that asked why a lot. But why? Literally why? Tell me. I'm so curious. That's what I would say. Tell me why your religion, your society, your culture, your own personal beliefs, your political beliefs, tell me why they've informed your opinion. And tell me why maybe you're not willing to shift. I think even in that conversation, even if there's no common ground found, when you hear somebody else ask why and be genuinely interested, on some level, I believe it reminds us that we are connected, that we're all humans. Regardless of our mental state, regardless of our ability to actually open our minds and hearts to other people. We do all, well, let me back up. I do believe most of us want connection. We want to walk out of our house every day and we want to feel connected to people. And connection comes through conversation and curiosity. Now, certainly in America and certainly under more divisive administrations, people section off intentionally and the curiosity stops because there's fear, fear of annihilation of cultures and communities, which is tough. It's tough to overcome. But we have to start, I really believe, and this sounds kind of preachy, but I honestly believe this. We have to start with our children. We have to start with our families, with our husbands, with our wives, with our partners, with our grandparents, aunts, uncles, with our coworkers, and just be curious, man. Nothing that I say here in this one podcast and nothing that you're going to do in one conversation is going to change the face of the world, but it's going to change your experience of life. And perhaps, and ideally, another person's as well. So that you could sit down and share a meal and enjoy the beauty of a summer day. Oh, that sounds so cliche. But I'm thinking of two people sitting down at a meal, you know, and appreciating something, or going for a walk, or sharing the same space and just allowing each other to be human and allowing the curiosity and the interest in the other person's humanity to be enough to bridge that gap of difference, of different life experience. There is no world in which we have this utopia where everybody suddenly believes the same as the other people. Take all that life experience out of it. Like we just want different things out of life. We do, and that's really the beauty of society and the beauty of being able to move to different places where people hold those similar values. I actually think that's fine. I don't I think homogeny, I think everybody coming together and singing kumbaya, I think that's a pipe dream. I don't want to burst your bubble. And I'm generally more pragmatic than pessimistic. That sounds a little pessimistic, but I don't I don't even think that's the goal. The goal is just to be curious so that you can share space, so that we can share resources. Now, that's assuming that you want to do that. There are plenty of people in this world who just want to take, take, take. That's a real thing. And they're so deep in their own psychoses, whatever that is, that they just they don't care. That's a real thing. But if you're getting curious about somebody, if you really if you really do care to learn about the people around you, you'll know pretty quickly what kind of person you're dealing with. And some people you'll need to exit that conversation. If you and I met at a party, like I said, and you began to try to tell me how to believe, we won't last very long. But if we start in and we find a contradictory belief and we're both open-hearted and willing to talk about it, maybe we never see each other again. But there's gonna be a piece of your soul, of your of your psyche that relaxes, that walks away thinking, okay, well, at least I had a good conversation. We don't see eye to eye, but at least I had a good conversation. I know something more about them. I may not agree with it. I may think it's nuts, but I know something more about them. And I've offered them the respect of being curious enough to ask questions. If you're walking through your life, like my kids, if you're spouting this information that that someone else gave you, I don't know. I mean, this is gonna be a pretty strong opinion, but I I think you're missing the mark entirely. Well, at least I don't want to I don't want to hang out with you for too long. I want to get far enough to be curious about that, and then I want to move on. But you certainly cannot say that you care about any sort of peace in our society, however big or small you're talking about. It could be your your home, it could be your society at large, your city, your state, your country, whatever it is. You can't say that you care about that and refuse to be curious and refuse to give space for other people to to see life the way that they see it and live the life the way they live it. Certainly you can draw boundaries around disrespect and violence or discrimination. Sure. Absolutely. There's no place for any of that as far as I'm concerned. Certainly not if you're saying you want uh peace. And I do believe most of us want uh peace, whatever that means. We want we want harmony. We don't want to wake up and be in a battle every day. But they would like us to. Because as I've said so many times in these podcasts and so many times on my social media, the only way people can wield power is to divide us through religion, through politics, whatever it may be. You might just want to take a moment and figure out if you're a pawn in that, if you're regurgitating information again that someone's given to you, like my children do or have done. Or if you're really thinking and you're deciding that's how you want to believe. And then from there, if you're talking about wanting connection and peace, you better look at how willing you are to have a respectful conversation with somebody and learn about them. Because that's that's where it's really at. To be able to live next door to somebody and share nothing in common and not even necessarily want the same things out of life. But as long as you're not hurting each other or other people around you, to let them be who they're gonna be. And let's just take it further. Maybe you do believe that their belief systems are hurting people, but really check in and get curious with yourself. Are they actually are they out murdering people? Are they are they hurting other people? Because that's not acceptable. You don't have to accept that. I'm not I'm not telling you to be curious about why people hurt other people, but that's not most people. Most people are not out intentionally hurting others, they may be supporting organizations that hurt and oppress others. But how is that going to change unless we sit and have conversations out of curiosity on both sides? It's not. People are just gonna section off. So wherever you find yourself in life this week or coming up, especially if you have someone that is close to you or or even if it's a stranger who ignites something in you, who uh frustrates you because they believe a certain thing. And you just don't understand how they could move through life that way. I'm telling you, as a queer man, my heart could easily close down to those people who don't think that my life is okay. To those people who say there's no place for you in my understanding of life. But why would I? Because that's just gonna keep us in our separate corners. I want to be curious, and I'd like you to be curious. I'd like you to take a moment with somebody, one person, one instance where maybe you haven't been curious, and stop and learn something. Ask a question. Don't just take the information there someone else has given you at face value and form an opinion and refuse to talk about it. Be curious. Bridge the gap where you can. And stop looking for this utopia where we all just believe the same thing because it's not gonna happen. That's not the purpose of life, as I can see it, never has been. It's growth, it's compassion, it's patience, all born from curiosity about why another person lives, walks, talks, breathes the way they do. And if I do nothing else in my life, but I leave a series of those conversations behind me, and if I teach my children to do that, and I create that kind of conversation in my home, I know that spreads outward, and I know that will be for me a life well lived. I don't mind having the money, I don't mind having the success, all that, but that does not, for lack of a better word, trump for me the experience of really understanding why the people around me live the lives they live, and of having those conversations and of expanding my mind. Okay. I think that's enough for now. Until next time, take good care of yourself. Bye-bye. I'm sighted.