Be Curious to Be Kind

I'm right behind the #BeKind way of thinking. We could all do with more kindness in the world whether it's a random act of kindness for someone we don't even know or paying a little more attention to someone we do.

One of my favourite acts of kindness is to be curious. By being curious we show we value the other person and actively take time to know about the other person's world. Everybody wants that.

This reminds me of an event when I was a teenager that made me realise the power of simple and genuine curiosity. My parents used to be, what was then called, Residential Social Workers, and used to work at a residential school West of London that took in boys from East London. These boys came with a mixed bag of a bunch of troubles and let's just say that they didn't fit in the normal school system. I was a couple of years older than some of the oldest boys and I got on well with one of the teachers who invited me to help out with some Summer camping trips down in Dorset.

It was an eye-opening experience to hear about the life of some of these young chaps and I found that a good strategy was to just be curious, listen and keep an open mind. I could tell you some real horror stories but one event has stuck in my mind for over 35 years.

I noticed on one of the first days of a Summer camp that there was one boy on the beach who seemed particularly withdrawn and quiet and, unlike all the other boys, never took his school polo shirt off to run around on the beach.

I decided to get curious.

I found a moment to have a quiet chat and asked this young lad why he had kept his shirt on all day despite the fact it had been so hot.

I got the usual, "Just cos" kind of response and persisted and got the reply, "Well it's obvious innit?" I said, "No, it isn't to me and I just wanted to check that nothing was wrong".

Then he floored me with the comment. "Well, it's my skin. It's so much blacker than everyone else".

Half the boys in the group were black and this particular boy did indeed have darker skin than the rest. I hadn't noticed until then. I was taken aback and didn't know quite what to say. I stumbled for some words and eventually said something I'm sure was politically incorrect and naive like, "Wow. I'd love to have your colour skin, especially when it's so hot. Look at my red, pasty skin that I have to cover with suntan oil and then it just burns and peels anyway".

He said, "Oh, OK." and we left it there. I wasn't quite sure how he had taken my response but it was genuine.

The next day he was running around the beach with the other boys and he had his top off. He seemed to be a different person. Just a young lad, running around a beach with his mates. He stayed like that for the rest of the trip and I didn't see the withdrawn behaviour again.

This was my first experience of just how powerful curiosity can be. All I had to be was genuinely curious and it could change how someone thinks about themselves. Despite a long career in engineering and management, I've always had a curiosity for people and it's led me to the work I do now. That boy on that beach taught me so much and I will always be grateful that I could be curious enough to make a difference to him.

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