What if we approached everyday life with the same curiosity we bring to travel?
In this week’s Leadership Story Talks debrief, Jerome Deroy and Julienne Ryan reflect on their conversation with Joe Diaz of AFAR Media and one story in particular: AFAR’s “Spin the Globe” exercise, in which writers travel somewhere they did not choose themselves and allow the experience to unfold with far less control than most of us are accustomed to.
One of those writers is blind. When he arrives somewhere new, one of the first things he does is look for an elbow to grab. And, as Joe explained, he always finds one. That simple image stayed with Jerome because it says something not only about travel, but about mindset: the willingness to enter an unfamiliar place believing that other people may be willing to help.
At a time when so much public conversation emphasizes division, distrust, and conflict, that belief can feel almost radical.
The Mistake May Be the Point
AFAR’s approach to travel deliberately leaves room for the unscripted. Not everything should be planned. You may turn down the wrong street, miss something you expected to see, or find yourself talking to someone who was never part of the itinerary. Yet those moments can become the ones you remember most clearly.
Julienne had just returned from traveling herself and reflected on how often the unplanned interaction becomes more meaningful than the carefully arranged experience. You can arrive somewhere carrying assumptions about the people who live there. Maybe you have been told that nobody will speak to you, that people are unfriendly, or that you should expect a certain kind of response. Then one conversation quietly dismantles the whole story.
Travel gives us opportunities to be wrong about people. That can be one of its greatest gifts. Curiosity asks us to suspend the assumption that we already know what a place, community, or person will be like. It asks us to pay attention before we decide.
Bringing That Mindset Home
Jerome connected Joe’s philosophy to something much broader than travel. What if we walked out of our homes each morning with the same open-mindedness we bring to a new city?
When we travel, we often become more observant. We look at buildings, notice street corners, ask questions, talk to strangers, and accept that we do not know how everything works. Then we return home and stop noticing. The familiar becomes invisible.
Julienne wondered what might change if we applied the same rules to our own neighborhoods and communities. What if we noticed the small things worth seeing? What if we spoke to people we normally pass without acknowledgement? What if we behaved less like residents moving efficiently through a known environment and more like curious visitors?
Travel may sharpen that awareness because it removes us from habit. But we do not have to stay away from home to practice it.
Small Interactions Can Change the Day
Julienne shared an example from a train journey between Vienna and Salzburg. A woman was visibly angry because someone had taken her seat. A family with a young baby had settled there, apparently trying to arrange themselves so they could sit together, and Julienne could see the frustration in the woman’s body language.
Instead of allowing the situation to continue, Julienne waved her over and invited her to sit beside her. They began talking. By the end of the journey, the woman admitted how furious she had been, but the conversation had changed the experience completely.
What initially looked like a small travel inconvenience opened into something else. The woman shared that she was worried about her family and was traveling to help because her daughter-in-law was very ill. There was urgency underneath the anger.
Without that conversation, Julienne would never have known. The moment is a useful reminder of how quickly we interpret behavior without knowing what sits behind it. Someone seems rude, impatient, distracted, or unreasonable, and we build the rest of the story ourselves.
Curiosity offers another option.
Get Behind the Experience
Julienne reflected on the importance of getting behind another person’s experience rather than assuming we already understand it. Sometimes strangers make that easier. People can be unexpectedly honest with someone they may never see again, and there is a kind of freedom in the temporary relationship: a seatmate on a train, another traveler in an airport, someone helping with directions, a person standing beside you in a queue.
A few minutes of genuine attention can allow someone to shift their perspective. The woman on the train could have spent the next two hours angry. Instead, she had another interaction available to her, and that interaction created a reset.
Julienne wondered whether there is a ripple effect in moments like that. A person who has just been treated kindly may carry a little more patience into the next conversation. We rarely know where a small gesture ends.
Ask for the Elbow
The image of the blind traveler looking for an elbow becomes even more meaningful in this context. To ask for help requires a degree of trust. It also requires an acknowledgement that we cannot always manage everything alone.
For many people, that is uncomfortable. We are taught to be self-sufficient, to prepare, to anticipate problems, and to avoid appearing vulnerable. Travel often disrupts that illusion. We do not know the language. We do not understand the transportation system. We cannot find the address. We need someone to point, explain, translate, or guide us.
And very often, someone does.
Jerome was struck by the optimism in Joe’s story: most people, given the opportunity, are willing to help one another. That does not mean abandoning common sense or ignoring risk. Julienne put it well when she talked about using all of our senses, including common sense. Be intentional, be polite, pay attention, and take a chance on people.
Listening Before Assuming
The conversation also returned to something central to Narativ’s work: listening. Julienne wondered what might happen if we occasionally approached another person almost as though we had closed our eyes.
What if, instead of immediately judging what we see, we listened more carefully to what someone was saying? What if we resisted the temptation to fill in the gaps about who they are, what they believe, or what motivates them?
We often think listening is about receiving words, but it is also about suspending assumptions long enough for another person’s experience to emerge. Travel can make us better at this because we know we are outsiders. We expect not to understand everything.
At home, we can become too confident that we already know.
Curiosity as an Everyday Practice
Joe Diaz and AFAR’s philosophy ultimately offers more than a way to travel. It offers a way to move through the world.
Curiosity means leaving room for surprise, accepting that the wrong turn may become the interesting one, noticing the person beside you, and allowing yourself to ask for help when you need it. It also means being willing to offer help when someone else needs it.
These are small acts, but they change the quality of an interaction. They can change the way we experience a place, a journey, a neighborhood, or an ordinary morning commute.
Perhaps most importantly, they challenge the assumption that other people are obstacles we have to navigate around. What if we approached them instead as potential sources of connection? What if we walked into the world expecting, more often than not, to find someone willing to help?
That may be one of the most valuable things travel can teach us.
And we do not need to get on a plane to practice it.
