“Seek: How Curiosity Can Transform Your Life and Change the World”
by Scott Shigeoka
2023/Balance
$30/243 pages
His friends worried about him. When Scott Shigeoka quit his job to travel around America for a year, they figured he’d be the target of all kinds of bad things. As a queer Asian American man, Shigeoka wasn’t searching for himself, and he surely wasn’t looking for trouble. No, he was looking for strangers, to see what we have in common with one another. “I wanted to feel less scared and angry all the time,” he says.
Shigeoka posits that our general lack of curiosity about one another “is literally killing us.” With that in mind, he headed out to small towns in the south, a reservation in Minnesota, a Trump rally, and a retreat center with nuns and millennials.
He learned to D.I.V.E. into his outward curiosity. Detach, he says, and let go of assumptions, biases and certainty. Even if you think you’re against racism, homophobia or any other intolerance, you “still have unconscious biases that need to be interrupted and challenged.” Learn to act with Intent. Know what questions to ask so that you can best learn about others. Show someone their Value by remembering that their political leaning “is only one piece of a person’s life and personality.” And learn to Embrace what’s in front of you. This will “open the doors” to “more fulfillment and happiness to your life.”
This book is useful, easy to grasp and enthusiastic, but could offer more cautionary words to readers who may be too eager, as some of the ideas here may be perceived as obnoxious or threatening.
Current Issue - May 2024