Choosing Curiosity over Judgment on a Walk through Rome

A slide from Carolyn's TEDxHartford talk that says "Curiosity Over Judgement" in Red and white letters on a Black background

I am just back from a week in Rome, where I was lucky enough to be on an anniversary trip with Geoff. Rome is where we went on our honeymoon and it is our favorite place to visit.

We got to do our favorite things, wandering this city we love, exploring history, art, and culture and eating lots and lots and lots of pasta.

As awesome as it was, it was also a weird time to be away, just two weeks into the year, as well as a time of scary events back in the US. While romantic and connecting, I felt guilty and anxious being there, and this mix of feelings led me to notice some themes as I walked around the ancient ruins of Rome alongside the modern life all around us.

Just outside the city, at Hadrian’s Villa, there is this strange intimacy of history. Mosaic floors, crumbling walls, and water features designed to soothe a nervous system that lived some two thousand years ago. It was incredibly beautiful against the stormy sky, somewhat haunting as it was empty of visitors, due to the rainstorm that had dumped on us moments before we arrived.

An image from our visit to Hadrian's Villa of a ruin of a bath built in AD 134. Concrete, marble and another stone I am failing to remember, which my husband the geologist will tell me the name of if he reads this blog...a fun little test....stay tuned.

Earlier, we had wandered along the ancient Via Appia Antica and through the Roman Forum and walked the same stones that once held speeches, verdicts, betrayals, and crowds. And in the churches and restaurants and hotels built over Roman ruins, you feel the layering, one world literally placed on top of another and another, with new uses over ancient foundations. One community buried under a new community.

Rome is beautiful, and it’s also a record of thousands of years of tragic and terrible human mistakes. Many of those mistakes feel like they are being repeated here at home. At times on this trip as much as we were in this romantic bubble, Rome felt less like a vacation and more like a mirror.

A second image of Hadrian's Villa of the ruins of a theatre on the insanely expansive grounds. The photograph shows a circular pool reflecting the columns and sky around it.

The question I could not stop asking

As I walked, I kept coming back to a question that felt urgent and troubling:

How can we get curious about what is unfolding rather than settle into judgement, into the binary of good and bad, right and wrong, even when those lines feel powerfully clear to us?

How can we stay curious long enough to stay in our humanity, long enough to figure out a way out of this mess?

I asked this even as I felt the pull of certainty of who was at fault and who was to blame. I felt the horror and the helplessness and the rage. With all of these feelings I attempted to stuff with gelato after gelato, I understand how quickly fear can turn into rigidity, and how quickly rigidity can turn into contempt.

And I also know this from all the research and work I have done in the human experience of growth and of healing: When we let certainty harden us, we lose access to the very capacities we need to create solutions and connections. We lose imagination, we lose nuance, and we lose the ability to stay in relationship long enough to repair what is breaking.

And before I continue, let me say very loudly:

Curiosity is not passivity, nor is it denial. And most of all, it is not pretending that harm is not harm.

Instead, curiosity is a refusal to let our nervous systems collapse the world into only two categories, even when those two categories very much exist....there is still right and there is still wrong.

But even with that truth, curiosity remains a tool and a skill we need to utilize to stay connected to the humanity that will prevent us from descending further into devastation.

Curiosity is the choice to keep asking, even while we are scared and furious,

“What is really happening here?” and “What would it take to move us toward safety and dignity?”

Curiosity keeps us asking the questions even after we have an answer, a belief, a truth we attach to. Staying open to other answers helps us stay connected and open to what else might also be true. Curiosity gives us back the nuance and sublety beyond the black and white and gives us access to solutions and to healing.

The pattern we could see in the ruins

History doesn’t repeat perfectly, but it rhymes. Here’s what I saw as I walked around, feeling lost (and scared and furious) about what was happening back home.

Again and again, societies and their humans slide into the same groove:

1.        Fear rises. People feel (and are) unsafe, unseen, or humiliated.

2.        A story hardens around what is happening. Someone becomes the reason, the enemy, the threat, the problem.

3.        Language changes: people stop being people and become categories: "monsters," "vermin," "criminals..."

4.        Cruelty becomes reasonable: harm gets framed as protection, patriotism, or justice. "they had it coming," "what did they think was going to happen?" "they deserve it!"

5.        Revenge becomes tempting: the harmed dream of payback; the powerful tighten control. "lock them up!" "I wish him/her/them a painful medical procedure/death..."

(*as you read those 5 points, did you see yourself or did you see "them"? Can you see where you repeat this pattern? I know I can see where and when I have been (or am) part of this pattern, in case you thought therapists were so evolved past our shared struggle...)

Rome had its own versions of this, conquest justified by superiority, public spectacles of punishment, and a social order that could and did call some lives disposable. We saw evidence of it in the ruins, the basilicas, the museums.

We’d like to believe we’re beyond that now. We like to justify our shitty behavior and wrap it into calls of patriotism, public safety, or even the moral highground.

But the nervous system that built empires is the same nervous system scrolling headlines today.  Dehumanizing is still dehumanizing; aggression is still aggression...regardless of which side is doing it and what day and age it is happening. And each time it happens, we ALL lose a little more of our humanity.

So as we walked around, I felt gobsmacked by beauty and by grief, as well as anxiety and guilt at being away and being helpless, rendering the sights 'awesome' in a hundred different ways. I am still struggling for the right words and actions to contribute something helpful and meaningful.

So here I am, starting here myself sharing what I think could be helpful to others who are tryign to make sense and make choices of what to do with the fear and rage. I share this while I do the local things I can do to contribute to healing.

So:

If fear and rage are present in you as they are in me, what would it look like to choose curiosity over judgement, not because the stakes are low, but because the stakes are so high?

Choose curiosity even as you take the other steps that feel aligned for you.

Start by noticing the moment your body tightens and your language turns absolute. Then, as gently as you can, name the value you hold that is underneath the fear or rage and choose one small next action that serves it, something that helps you stay human while you figure out what comes next.

Notice if it feels different, better, worse and try staying curious even as the feelings intensify or abate. Stay curious and let me know what comes up....I am...curious. (groan)

More soon…let me know what you think….