Over the years, I’ve realized that it is quite rare to find people who willingly engage in exploring their understanding of the world, themselves, and others.

The people I’m trying to describe here are those who are willing to let themselves and their beliefs be challenged. They do so with curiosity or a desire, and without a need to defend them. They combine curiosity, a desire to understand, humility, and the willingness to show up with their ideas and beliefs.

What’s frequent, however, is people who engage in describing their understanding of the world, themselves, and others. Instead of exploring with curiosity, they tend to obsess over the idea of getting it right or tend to ruminate in endless loops of revisiting existing thought patterns. They combine more or less rigid beliefs with a need to defend them. They combine a desire to know and be seen as knowledgeable or right with their ideas and beliefs.

It’s also rare to meet people who are only one or the other. None is better than the other. Who one prefers in one’s company is a question of personal preferences.

Blind spots also consist of beliefs we hold, sometimes without awareness, and sometimes because there was never a reason to be curious about them. That’s how some beliefs resemble “laws of nature.” And that’s also why it can be difficult to see them challenged.