Be curious, not judgmental.
~ Ted Lasso
By the time you read this, you’ve most likely enjoyed (or endured) the annual gathering of friends and family around the Thanksgiving table. Hopefully, the food and drink were delicious, and the conversation was amicable.
However, if you walked away agitated or inflamed by someone’s opinions on religion, politics, your hairstyle, how much whipped cream belongs on a piece of pumpkin pie, or which way the toilet paper roll is aligned in the guest bathroom, now is a great time to put the above quote into practice as we cross into a month of endless social gatherings.
Ted Lasso is a fictional television program about an American football coach who takes charge of an English soccer team. In one scene Ted is challenged to a game of darts by the team’s vindictive former owner. As he picks up a dart, Ted begins to speak.
“Guys have underestimated me my entire life and for years I never understood why – it used to really bother me. Then one day I was driving my little boy to school, and I saw a quote by Walt Whitman, it was painted on the wall there and it said, ‘Be curious, not judgmental.’ I like that.” (Ted throws a dart.)
“So, I get back in my car and I’m driving to work and all of a sudden it hits me – all them fellas that used to belittle me, not a single one of them was curious. You know, they thought they had everything all figured out, so they judged everything, and they judged everyone. And I realized that their underestimating me – who I was had nothing to do with it. Because if they were curious, they would’ve asked questions. Questions like, ‘Have you played a lot of darts, Ted?’” (Ted throws another dart.)
“To which I would have answered, ‘Yes sir. Every Sunday afternoon at a sports bar with my father from age ten until I was 16 when he passed away.’ Barbecue sauce.” (Ted throws a double bullseye to win the game.)
The VIA Institute on Character names both curiosity and judgment as strengths. Curiosity is “often described as novelty-seeking and being open to experience, and it’s associated with the natural desire to build knowledge.” A curious child asks a lot of questions. They start by asking who, what, where, when and how, and eventually work up to the big question: Why? As adults, too many of us stop asking questions at all and assume we know everything about a person, place or thing, or we stop asking questions before we get to the juicy ones.
Asking “who” is not enough, but that’s where our curiosity tends to hit a brick wall. “Oh, they’re a _______.” Now you have a label, and that label is tied to a host of beliefs and meanings, but it may have very little to do with who that individual actually is. Curiosity leads us to keep asking, keep seeking information and knowledge.
Judgment is defined as “weighing all aspects objectively in making decisions, including arguments that are in conflict with my convictions.” That’s very different than being judgmental: “tending to make quick and excessively critical judgments, especially moral ones.”
It’s easy to fall prey to judgmental thoughts, words and actions. When we fail to be curious and ask enough questions, we aren’t using the strength of judgment because we don’t have all the information we need. We’re missing parts of the equation, and that leads to incorrect answers.
So be curious. Don’t rush to judgment. We might be surprised by what we can learn.
