Curiosity heals.

With admiration, I watch the man in his forties, wearing a white t-shirt and a backpack, effortlessly descend the narrow, steep ravine, while we struggle to make our way down the eroded sandstone using iron handholds.

Forty-five minutes later, we cross paths again, but this time he’s going uphill. “Going up again?” I ask. We both pause for a moment on a small plateau. “Curiosity,” he says with a beaming smile and a Slavic accent. He adds, “I had severe back pain, but a few days in these mountains made it disappear like snow in the sun.” I can almost guess what he’s carrying in his backpack, but I keep it to myself. “Enjoy!” I say, and he replies with, “Have a good journey.”

As I continue my downhill walk, I keep reflecting on his “curiosity” and the way he expressed it. Curiosity is about the future. It’s not just about wondering what you’ll find at the top. This was more like ‘wondering about’. His curiosity felt more like, how does this place work? With all its strange gorges, caves, and rock formations?

In a flash, I realize: curiosity heals. This man is essentially saying it himself. His curiosity stems from a place beyond understanding how things work. And I realize that when you connect with a point beyond knowing how it all fits together, you set life energy in motion. A life energy that also heals. A life energy that’s oriented towards the future. Beyond the past and beyond dwelling on the reasons why things are the way they are.

As I descend, several instances flash through my mind where I’ve physically healed myself, even when doctors, physiotherapists, and other specialists said there was nothing they could do for me. A frozen shoulder, damaged nerves in my hand after a long bike ride, and recovery after a broken and surgically repaired back are just a few examples.

I also begin to understand the difference between hope and curiosity.

Hope is static. Hope is about something that isn’t there yet. Hope places the action in the hands of others or a higher power.

Curiosity, on the other hand, is about bringing something to life. I can’t put it any other way. Bringing something to life, even though you don’t yet know what it is. Curiosity takes action into its own hands. Curiosity is active.

This is exactly how we work at Transitionstudio. We are curious. Dees van de Hoef, for instance, might interrupt me in the middle of an explanation and say, “Wait a minute, let’s try something.” And then she’ll make an intervention. Our interventions are born from curiosity. And we inspire curiosity in participants. An experiment can never fail; it always brings something new. Yet our way of working is anything but random.

We align ourselves with where life energy wants to go and what it wants to achieve. We use our experience as a solid foundation from which we operate. And we take what participants say, want, wish for, and struggle with very seriously. With curiosity, our work also takes on a certain lightness. And a healing quality. And I can see the man in his white t-shirt again, light-footedly disappearing around the bend.

~Jan Jacob Stam
Frankische Schweiz
August 2024