Some years ago I was hiking along a beach in Haida Gwaii, large islands located far off the north west coast of British Columbia. A remote and wild place, far enough off the coast of the mainland to have evolved its own, now renowned, distinct ecosystem. I had jumped out of overseeing my two sons to dash out to the beach for a cruise. There was no one there, and I walked and walked.
Shortly before heading out to Haida Gwaii I had been invited by my then new colleague and mentor in the world of ‘change facilitation’, Rich Batchelor, to join him in a project about ‘curiosity’. I was thrilled by the prospect. The quote I had included in my leaving class profile in high school was from Lewis Carrol’s ‘Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland’: “Curiouser and curiouser” said Alice, remarking on how she grew and grew from eating a magical piece of cake. But I was learning that ‘curiosity’ wasn’t as easy as cake.
I learned, rapidly, in beginning to research curiosity that it was something we had a great deal of when we were children and infants, but that we lost it precipitously from the age of about five (when we go to school). Children are innately curious. Adults not so much. Furthermore curiosity, while generously extolled (particularly in entrepreneurial and leadership journals) as a necessary characteristic and aptitude in the realms of innovation, had a somewhat sinister side. After all ‘curiosity killed the cat’, and it was Pandora’s insatiable curiosity which overcame even the forbidding trickery of Zeus to open a box which contained all the panoply of sins and griefs which would visit upon humankind. The Old Testament story of Paradise, in which Eve (and then Adam) eats the forbidden fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, had very much the same outcome. In both cases the curiosity of the (female) protagonist opened the box, breached the walls, against the decree of an ultimate (male) authority: Zeus, Yahweh.
This was curious.
Nabakov once wrote, “Curiosity is insubordination in its purest form”.
Curiosity* is disruptive.
But disruptive to what?
I happened to know the etymology of ‘Paradise: ‘para’ means ‘around’, and ‘daeza’ means ‘wall’. So, Adam and Eve lived in a walled garden, and curiosity resulted in them being expelled from the walled garden.
Curiosity breaks rules, opens boxes, and breaches walls.
In Pandora and in Paradise the curious protagonists don’t seem to fare so well. Interestingly, in the Haida creation myth ‘Raven and the First People’ (which took place, according to legend, on Rose Spit; a very long walk up the very same beach I was roaming on) it is Raven, the creator/trickster, who is the curious one, peeling open a noisy clam shell out of which the first people spill.
But, what is ‘the wall’, or ‘the box’, or ‘the clam shell’ that curiosity seems to hunger to break out of, or into?
And so… I think that these were some of the thoughts roaming my mind when I went out for a walk on the beach in Haida Gwaii. And, while walking and walking, in solitude, with the waves gently, arhythmically, broaching the shore as they have for billenia, witnessing the sand and stones which make that beach, so evidently shaped by the waves gently broaching the shore for billenia, and the rhythmic sound of the shuffle of my boots on the beach, and the shore birds calling and rising up, and the gentle gusts of wind (it was late summer in Haida Gwaii, and the weather can be kind then), I think the wrestling match of my own mind, it’s plans and borders and cycles, crumbled for a moment… and in that moment three words flew into my head:
Route, Rig, Reel.
Route, Rig, Reel.
‘Route, Rig & Reel’ are three very simple words representing three approaches to identity.
They are three ways of responding to the question, ‘Who are you?’.
‘Route’ (which also has a relationship to ‘root’, and ‘rote’ and ‘rite’) is a path: the path we’re on now, in the present; and also the path which brought us to where we are now, the past; and also the path which we’re foreseeing and projecting, the future.
‘Rig’ (drawn from ‘rigging’ a sailboat, and what truckers call their trucks, and what electronic musicians call their gear, and what addicts call the apparatus by which they can get a ‘fix’) is an assembly and network of people, processes and things.
‘Reel’ (drawn from the steel cable reels that I used to work with in my first job, and fishing reels, and the ‘reels’ of folk dance music, with a further relationship to ‘Real’) is the cycles of behaviour, and the looping stories we tell ourselves; our practices, habits and addictions.
We are made of our path, our assembly and network, and our cycles: our ‘Route’, our ‘Rig’ and our ‘Reels’.
We are all like a box, and we are all like a walled garden, and we are all like a clam shell; we all have borders and perimeters.
Inside is ‘me’, my ‘family’, my ‘tribe’, my ‘organisation’, my ‘nation’, my ‘belief system’ (my ideology’, or my ‘religion’), my ‘paradigm’.
Outside is ‘other’, ‘uncertain’, ‘unknown’…
A good while has passed since I had that little epiphany on the beach.
‘Route, Rig & Reel’ stuck… as a concept…
More recently it occurred to me that the concept could be explored and facilitated through a series of workshops. Wouldn’t it be useful if curious folks could get a glimpse of ‘who they are’ through the lenses of the path they’re on, the network/assembly they’re engaged in, and the habits which rule their lives? And, given that we are, and must be, migratory creatures (identity can have a habit of resisting migration), wouldn’t it be useful to reconsider our paths, networks and habits through a further lense – what I now call ‘Roll’ – of our deep values and aspirations. What path, and network/assembly, and habits can we work towards to enable our deep values and aspirations to emerge?
I’ve given many workshops on a variety of themes: curiosity, disruption, complexity, poise, creativity… So, I’ve created a ‘Route, Rig, Reel & Roll’ workshop series. An introduction, and then one workshop for each of the four themes.
So, I warmly invite you to an exploration of who you are, and where you’re going… an exploration which I anticipate will raise some good quest-ions!
You can learn more about them, and sign up for them, right here.
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*Curiosity is made of questions.
[Here are a few essays on the theme of curiosity.]
There are many kinds of questions which are not so good; rhetorical questions (we already know the answer and it’s a set up), questions which are sarcastic (now is that just a really, really brilliant idea, or what?), and questions which are designed to corral someone into a pen (Socrates was exceptional at this).
A really good question invites a journey. It is, more precisely, a quest-ion. That is, curiosity’s thirst ‘to know’ is achieved by asking and, even more importantly, following questions… and the first five letters of ‘question’ is ‘quest’.
But… a quest towards what?
As I have said to my dear sons – whom I left for a little while while I tracked along the beach – quoting Blake, “We are here for a little while to bear the beams of love.”
‘Love’ is truly the greatest and most enduring and real and most compelling challenge to identity, and we can only experience love from the deepest heart/mind/body of our identity.
The very best quest-ions of all invite an embarkation towards love.