Learning is a journey that begins for everyone from childhood. Right from birth, a child begins to learn, slowly and steadily with every breath. As the child begins to move around by crawling and then walking, its learning also accelerates simultaneously. This journey of learning continues until adulthood for most people who are blessed to have opportunities for formal education. Some choose to consciously continue this journey throughout their life, seeking new ideas and material to learn. Some others choose to stop once they have reached their logical conclusion after formal education. When I say learning in this context, I am referring to the conscious and visible process of accessing new material to consume, understand and implement. I am currently excluding the process of learning that occurs unconsciously as part of anything we do in life.
Whenever an individual has to learn something new, be it a skill or a language or an art, the human tendency is to swing between two extremes. One is of Anxiety, the other is Curiosity. Anxiety here refers to the spectrum of emotions that include fear, worry, tension, stress, etc, anything that is restrictive. Curiosity includes excitement, interest, wonder, inquisitiveness, etc, the emotions that generate a high. While these represent the two ends of the continuum, the journey itself traverses throughout this space, and isn’t restricted to these extremes alone. Human emotions are seldom a black-and-white phenomenon, and any journey, especially one such as learning, makes one travel through various parts of this continuum in various phases. An awareness of this concept and its conscious utilization can, I believe, significantly lighten the load for any learner.
Let us look at this concept first through the prism of time. Most children are curious beings. Their curiosity begins right from the age that they begin to move or crawl, or even earlier. They are eager to explore, eager to test their limits. They want to know what is present in their environment and explore it all.
Children mostly don’t fear new opportunities to learn until the environment teaches them to fear it.
At some point, in the process of growing up, they begin to form beliefs about themselves, others and life in general. These beliefs play an important role in determining their starting point on the Anxiety-Curiosity (A-C) Continuum. Some children form beliefs that take them to the Anxiety side of the scale while others may find themselves on the Curiosity side. Irrespective of where they may find themselves at the beginning, it is crucial to understand that it is just the starting point, literally and figuratively.
Children as well as adults, throughout their process of learning something new, will find themselves moving across the continuum at different points in time. Let me elaborate this with an example. Chitra is a well-functioning, smart college student who is pursuing her masters. She has a tendency to become anxious about her academic performance, having grown up around high expectations in her personal space. So, she struggles with new subjects, and they tend to give her many sleepless nights. However, slowly, as she begins to find her groove in some topics, she starts enjoying her learning and looks forward to those classes more than the others. This would be the part where her curiosity peaks and her anxiety seems to be fading. Yet, when faced with an unexpected setback or challenge during this process as well, she would find herself sliding back towards the anxiety side of the scale. This would continue until she has developed enough expertise on the said subject, where she finds herself in a steady position on the scale in relation to that subject. This is when she may reach a point where her confidence on the subject has made her more curious to new information on it, rather than anxious.
We can see many examples in our life which are similar or probably starkly different from Chitra’s own experience of learning. What is crucial to understand here is this –
Irrespective of where one begins their journey of learning, travelling across the continuum is an inevitable part of the process.
What is harmful instead, is staying fixated on either of the two extremes. Hovering around the Anxiety extreme of the continuum is obviously not useful. It often results in paralysis of thoughts or inaction. While curiosity may seem to be the positive side of the spectrum, it is still not useful in isolation. When a person is highly curious, without boundaries, s/he can be dangerous to themselves as well as others. Imagine a curious child who doesn’t know the risks of fire. Or a scientist without boundaries, whose experiments can harm himself or others around him. Instead, while being on the curious side of the continuum, our anxiety sets the boundaries for learning and experimentation and provides a positive structure.
What I have articulated here is a description of common learning experiences that people have gone through regularly. Yet, the purpose of this blog and this concept is two-fold. First, may it serve as a reminder for those of us going through anxious phases while learning, that it is natural to do so. May we allow ourselves the space for anxiety to express itself within limits. Second, we can use this concept’s understanding to look for ways to become curious about what we are learning. This helps one to move away from the anxiety, and avoid tightening its hold on our psyche. The problem with human behavior is that most of it happens outside of our conscious awareness. The moment we bring it to our conscious awareness, it begins to lose its grip on us. Tying this awareness to a psychological concept further gives us an opportunity for change and transformation of behavior. Such is the power of psychology.
What may begin as an anxious process can soon become a dance, with curiosity taking the lead more often and anxiety falling into the rhythm of the learning itself.
I wish to leave you with a beautiful story I came across in this context. There was once a little blue bird that lived happily with its parents and siblings in a cozy nest atop a big tree. As they were growing up, his siblings began to explore their flying skills and test their capabilities. While their mother encouraged them to take flight, she knew that the little one was still afraid to explore. She chose to let him take his time, supporting and caring for him at the nest itself. One night, as they were getting ready to rest, the little blue bird heard a sound outside. When he asked his mother who made this sound, she replied it was nothing. This aroused his curiosity. The next morning, he woke up early, determined to find out who this ‘Nothing’ was. He began to walk and ventured far away from his tree. By the time his parents and siblings woke up and began searching for him, he was long gone.
As he continued to walk, he reached a lake and stopped to take a drink. A green bird saw him searching for something and enquired about it. He replied that he was looking for Nothing. The bird decided to assist him in his search and began to fly looking. As they together continued to look, birds of all colours approached them to ask what they were searching for. Together they all began looking for Nothing, and in that search the little blue bird found his flight. Unbeknownst to him, he had begun to fly with his new friends, all because curiosity got the better off him.
Through this tale, I wish the same for all of us. May the curiosity in life give us the wings needed to soar to better heights, without letting anxiety tie us down.