Abby Covert

What person, animal, or thing models curiosity best?

I find the curiosity of small children to be inspiring and infectious. I think one of the things that makes them such good models is that they don’t have boundaries on what they are curious about. Sometimes their curiosity can even veer away from what we adults think of as appropriate, like asking why a new friend’s body is different than their own.

By the time we are in grade school we have already suppressed so much of our own curiosity into our own psyches alone, understanding what we are and are not allowed to talk about with others — but spend some time with a toddler learning how to express what’s going on in their own mind and get ready to be blown away by the thoughtfulness they have and what they are curious about.

I live with my family on the space coast of Florida and we are lucky to have easy access to seeing SpaceX launches from the end of our driveway. A few months ago, we walked out one evening to see a much anticipated night launch of a SpaceX shuttle with actual astronauts on it, the first of its kind.

The weather was perfect and the sight of that rocket going up was breathtakingly amazing. It was at a tender time in this country where there was a lot of pain and suffering, and it must have been the hope of it all getting the best of me, but I actually wept. Well, let’s be honest I kind of blubbered.

As we walked home I joked to James that I couldn’t believe that a rocket launch made me cry and we laughed about what I dork I sound like on the video I shot. You can hear the emotion catch in my throat. It’s sort of my own personal double rainbow video.

My son was a few months shy of two years old at the time and not doing much talking yet but he enjoyed the launch and pointed in its general direction when we went on walks for a few days after with the obvious glee of a memory.

A few months later, Jamie was talking up a storm and expressing his curiosity verbally more and more. One afternoon as we were reading a book that had a rocket in it, he pieced together a messy sentence to ask me why I cried that time we saw the rocket. Once I recovered from my shock, I thought about why he was asking.

I could tell from his question and the look on his face that me crying about the rocket just didn’t compute with what he thought that crying means, which was about sad or mad things for him at the moment. I told him that sometimes something is just so beautiful that people cry tears of joy, and that crying can be a sign of happy, not just sad or mad.

Later that night he told my husband about mama happy crying and the rocket. This time seeming like it was a fact that fit into his world view, not a conflict of concern.

To me, that’s the perfect example of a small child’s curiosity, being so curious about something that you are willing to wait patiently until you have the skills to figure out the answer – in this case Jamie had to learn how to talk before he could ask me.

Unlike adults, small children are so patient as they learn about the world around them. They don’t let the ambiguity stand in the way of enjoying their world as the small bubble they do understand for now. We could all use more of that modeling in my opinion.

What habits or practices do you have that cultivate curiosity?

I am a huge advocate of life logging and journaling. I find being curious about myself and my own life to be a major source of inspiration and clarity.

I have become most curious recently about the patterns that are caused in my personal productivity and mood by the season or cycle of the moon. In 2021 I have started to collect some data on this so I can get curious about myself and my own rhythms.

What advice do you have for designers?

If you can’t bring yourself to be curious about anything else, be curious about why you do the things you do. Introspection is one of the least valued and most valuable skills a designer can have. Knowing who you are and how to work with others is critical to getting pretty much anything done from a design perspective.