Suffering from a lack of curiosity.

This revised and updated article appeared in Mars Hill Review 3 Fall 1995: pages 42-49. It is the first in a series of essays considering curiosity as an antidote to the narcissism that increasingly plagues our nation, communities, and families.

I suffer from a lack of curiosity about others and myself. I yearn for others to be curious about me. I wonder how much of the rich textures of life I miss by not being appropriately curious about others.

Photo by Toni Koraza on Unsplash

I was traveling from Britain in 1995 when a faulty cargo bay door delayed my flight to Atlanta by twenty-four hours. The flight crew should have explained the nature and length of the delay to me or the other 350 passengers. They didn’t, so we spent most of the day on a roller coaster of heightened and dashed expectations in the Manchester airport, at some moments believing our departure was imminent, but eventually ending up in a local hotel for the night.

The inconvenience of a delayed flight provides an opportunity rare in the regular world of air travel. Those who were otherwise perfect strangers became sharers in a common unpleasant experience. As the day wore on, I became acquainted with about ten fellow travelers. Indeed, our group became a clique bound by our anger, frustration, and disappointment at postponed reunions and, for some, lost income.

Anger toward an airline does not usually knit a group into lasting relationships. But I developed an interest in a number of the members of my “group.” To me, they were fascinating. One shy man was an international skydiving champion. I almost had to drag this information out of him. Others who overheard soon became as intrigued with him as I was, and he showed us the gold medal from his most recent competition. Another man was the self-confident head of a successful trucking company in a western state. As an immigrant, he thrilled me with how he came to the United States with nothing and built a fortune through hard work and determination. I met a kind and generous man who made his living writing about antebellum life in the South. As he freely offered his recently acquired Yorkshire chocolates and a pleasant smile, he seemed to embody the graciousness of a lifestyle from the vanished days about which he was an expert. A furious young woman was a southern debutante returning from her first trip to Europe on her own (a rite of passage for high society women, as she explained). She betrayed her inner fear with neither apology nor embarrassment as she gave us quite a detailed account of what her father would do to the airline as punishment for treating his “little girl” this way. A half-dozen other stories were just as intriguing as these; The mixture of personalities was as delicious as an Agatha Christie mystery. All we needed to complete the scene was an inexplicable murder, with Hercule Poirot fingering the culprit before we disembarked.

There was no murder, thank goodness, but the shared experience of a delayed flight became a time of loneliness despite my attempts to engage fellow passengers. Though I discovered many fascinating (and not a few disturbing) things about my comrades, they seemed to learn nothing about me. Many times in my life, I have refused to disclose myself to others, but this was not one of them. Far from home, I longed to share something about myself with these people. Still, no one was interested enough to ask me anything. I do not recall being bitter about this. Still, several times in my increasing loneliness, I almost began to talk about myself anyway, without invitation. However, I resisted the temptation and waited for the invitation that never came. Not only did none of my fellow passengers know my name, they didn’t know that I was a university professor or that I had an interest in writing helpful articles.

The jet finally got off the ground and landed in Georgia a whole day late. I remember leaving the plane and my companions with a strange sense of relief. It had felt like hard work to learn so much about the lives of others who shared a common stressful experience with me and yet wait in vain for them to ask me something about myself. It felt like waiting alone in a room for a knock that never came.

The joy of reuniting with my loved ones dissipated my loneliness. My family and friends seemed genuinely interested in my travels and my ordeal. But this contrast caused me to realize how greatly I suffer from a lack of curiosity about others and myself. I yearn for others to be curious about me. I wonder how much of the rich textures of life I miss by not being appropriately curious about others.