leave what you know to find out what you know

​A friend recently told me he'd listened to some of the podcasts I've done in the past. He said, you're pretty good at that. Of course, I was humbled by that; grateful. But I did stop and pause and wonder for a minute, what makes me good at that?

The answer I came up with is curiosity. I am infinitely curious about other people - what they know, what makes them tick, what is it about them that connects them to me. Because every bit of my curiosity begins with the belief that we ARE all connected.

Those podcasts are just one way I've gone on this adventure of leaving what I know to find out what I know. To be honest with you, in many of those conversations, I walked away discovering I didn't know some things I thought I knew.

In his blog today, Seth Godin asks the question, "why isn't there a line at the library?" He makes the point that if the grocery store or the car dealership or any other establishment was giving their goods away, there would be a line a mile long.

But not at the library.

I fear some days it's become easiest for us to just go with what we know. It's like we've all jumped into these flowing rivers of our own thoughts and ideals and we just go with it. Or sometimes - it's not even our own rivers. We see a bunch of people floating along that seem to be our kind of people - they look like us, maybe go to the same church, root for the same college football team. There are similarities - so we jump in.

No questions asked - no books read - no curiosity at all about the river we just jumped into. The river we'll float through our life in.

I had another friend recently tell me:

"I love discussing ideas, theories, listening to others’ viewpoints and experiences - I can’t explain why I get jazzed up over it."

I can explain it, I think.

There is something "jazzy" about wanting to know what others know, what they believe and why they believe it, what they've been through and how that shaped them. I think the "jazziest" connections start with me being curious about you.

Meaningful connections start with curiosity, not with answers.

I fear we are far more a world of answers these days than curiosity. Maybe there are no lines at the library because we've concluded we already know all that we need to know.

When you get to that place, a couple of dangerous things can happen. You either jump in a river and go with the flow, or you stand next to one encouraging others to jump into it - because you're standing next to THE river.

I believe life is a big question, not an answer. And I believe our most meaningful connections happen when we cling to a question mark together, excited about the adventure, not avoiding it because we believe we have all the answers.

Leave what you know for a minute today to find out what you know. Go get "jazzy" with curiosity about someone else. Operate with the belief - for even a moment - that you don't know everything you know.