Curiosity

The way of the Elephant's Child

My mother read many stories to me when I was small.

One I loved best was the Elephant’s Child by Rudyard Kipling. How relatable, right? A small being wandering all over the place asking endless questions, and of course punished for them, until the resourceful child got a new nose and stopped the punishments.

It ends with a poem.

I keep six honest serving-men:
(They taught me all I knew)
Their names are What and Where and When
And How and Why and Who.

I send them over land and sea,
I send them east and west;
But after they have worked for me,
I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five.
For I am busy then,
As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,
For they are hungry men:

But different folk have different views:
I know a person small—
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!

She sends ‘em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes—
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!

From the Kipling Society, the Elephant's Child

This PT article by Madelyn Blair explores why humans stop asking why.

The shift away from why happens some time around the transition to adolescence. Madelyn posits it is because at that point, people begin thinking they know.

I wonder, though. There is of course a cognitive bias in being a young adult that tends toward a certain arrogance, but is that all it is?

I think what happens first is that the child stops asking why when they learn that endless whys are annoying to adults. They may or may not get spanked for it like the Elephant’s Child, but unless they have the most patient and understanding guardians, people will get exasperated and gradually they learn asking questions is a bad idea.

That unfortunately can tend to lead to ways of thinking that are less and less open-ended and more enmired in conformity. And asking fewer questions, and getting stuck, calcified.

• No Stupid Questions

Unfortunately being told this highlights that one’s question might be stupid and shuts down queries. Madelyn writes that instead, she tries to be supportive of students wanting more information.

If people really believed that others were interested in their questions, they would be more encouraged to ask. So how to ask why without embedded judgment?

• Rephrasing a Why to Go Deeper

Instead of asking a why that is just a kind of attack, this approach displays an openness to learn about aspects of the subject that aren’t immediately apparent.

• Setting Aside Looking Smart

Whys can be a way to score points in the adult world rather than actually gain more information. Asking the question differently to invite multiple perspectives is an alternate approach based in humility

• Asked and Answered

Sometimes information already given wasn’t done so in a way that is clear. Approaching from a standpoint of vulnerability, genuinely seeking clarification, helps open the way to restatement that could be the basis of moving the discussion forward.

• Not Just Interrupting. Still Taking Responsibility

Asking in a way that specifies what you are wishing to understand better, or that demonstrates personal involvement in the matter at hand are ways to keep really asking why.

I’ve mentioned the Johari Window in past articles here. There is only one section of it that is all knowledge (what I know that I know), and it is relatively tiny. The other three all involve what I don’t know, with the last being the deepest and darkest, what I don’t know that I don’t know.

There will always be a universe full of things in that last category.

So I cannot afford to stop asking questions, of myself, of others, of the Universe. There is so little time and so much more to learn.

Perhaps that famous saying of Jesus’ about needing to become like a child to enter the kingdom is partly about this, never losing the child-like curiosity about the university because you were shut down when trying, or imagined you knew, or came to understand questions can be barriers if received wrongly.

Ask and you shall receive.

Seek and you shall find.

Don’t give up on being an Elephant’s Child.