Curiosity has taken me places where fear would never let me go
- Yurani Cubillos
- Jan 27
- 5 min read
As a kid, curiosity got me in trouble, but I never lost it or allowed anyone to take it away from me. I didn’t always know that curiosity would become my compass. Back then, it just felt like movement. Like freedom. Like something in me refusing to stay small.
As a child, I lived in Compartir, a large urbanization in Soacha, Colombia. I spent the first ten years of my life there, learning how to move through a world that felt both dangerous and alive. I grew up in a low-income family. My mother was a teen mom, and my dad was a young adult who was murdered when I was four years old. I always had what I needed and felt loved most of the time, yet I carried a quiet feeling of being a burden.
I spent most of my time with my grandmother, a woman with a broken heart who loved her family, but whose words sometimes cut so deeply that some of us still carry those wounds, whether we want to admit it or not.
As an only child being looked after by her, it meant I spent a lot of time outside with friends, riding my bike, and probably seeing and hearing things children should not. Curiosity guided me, barefoot, messy hair, riding up and down the streets, sometimes farther than I was supposed to. Until a neighbor would say, “Your grandma is looking for you,” and then I would panic. She’d drag me by my hair into the house, and I’d do it again the next day.
I even saw a dead body once when I was out too far from home. The 90s in Colombia were scary, but I loved the thrill. I loved seeing things I wasn’t supposed to. At Christmas parties, I’d sip the leftover beer under tables and daydream about smoking cigarettes, fully convinced I was some kind of tiny, tragic, mysterious character in a movie.
But not everything in my childhood was about danger or rebellion. There was also tenderness.
While my dad was alive, I wanted to be just like him; I looked just like him, except he had a mustache. He was one of the few people who encouraged my curiosity about who I could be. I felt seen in a way I didn’t have words for yet. He was one of the few people who encouraged me to love my hair. He would always unbraid it, and my grandma would yell at him.
Curiosity let me do things like bring homeless kids into my grandma’s house while she was taking a nap. Bathe them. Clothe them. And then sit them down in front of my dry erase board to teach them the ABCs. Yes, I got in trouble for that.
Looking back now, I can see that even then, my curiosity wasn’t just about adventure. It was about people.
Curiosity constantly reminds me that my experience is not unique. That I am not alone.
Curiosity invites me to listen, to ask questions without judgment.
As I grew older, that same curiosity followed me into work, into relationships, into risk.
As a teenager, I had every job you could imagine. Clothing store, babysitter, spray-on tattoos, fast food restaurants. And then as an adult, curiosity allowed me to say yes to things that were scary. Things that people around me were afraid to do.
When I was 24 years old, I ended up in Alaska. Then I ended up spending a few months on a marijuana farm in Humboldt County, living in a tent. Saying yes changed me. I met people who traveled around the world. I met people with different religious beliefs than mine. I opened myself up to listen and learn about those. I fell in love with learning, I fell in love with the unknown, I fell in love with becoming someone new over and over and over again.
Curiosity helped me realize that I am ever evolving, always changing, and allowing myself the permission not to have to stay the same.
Curiosity is a constant companion.
Curiosity brought me to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico.
Curiosity allowed me to believe in myself.
To do things even when I was scared.
And more recently, curiosity brought me somewhere quieter, heavier, and more sacred.
It brought me to death work.
It brought me to ask: What does it mean to sit with someone at the end of their life? What does it mean to support grief, presence, ritual, and love when everything else falls away?
The same curiosity that once pulled me down unfamiliar streets now pulls me toward mortality, tenderness, and care. Toward becoming a death doula. Toward learning how to hold space for endings with the same openness I once had for beginnings.
Because of my curiosity, I have an abundance of intergenerational friendships that are really important to me, because they remind me that nobody has it figured out. No matter what stage of life you’re in, we’re all still becoming.
In times when everything feels so uncertain, when it feels like there’s nothing I can do to make things better for the world, curiosity reminds me to think outside the box. Maybe I can’t fix the whole world, but I can give back to the community around me. And I can make sure that every interaction I have with people is rooted in kindness, love, and understanding.
FAQs
1. How can curiosity become a compass when fear and uncertainty shape our lives?
Curiosity becomes our compass when it keeps us moving at moments when fear could easily freeze us. It pulls us into the world, into experiences we may not yet have language for, and invites us to say yes to what feels unknown, risky, or uncomfortable as we grow.
2. What happens when childhood survival instincts evolve into a practice of presence and care?
What once looks like rebellion or survival can slowly reveal itself as attention to people. Curiosity teaches us to bring others in, to notice who needs care, to sit, to teach, and to listen. Over time, survival softens into presence.
3. What does it mean to keep becoming, even when life asks us to slow down and face endings instead of beginnings?
It means allowing ourselves to change. Curiosity reminds us that we are always evolving, whether we are moving across places, saying yes to unfamiliar work, or entering quieter, heavier spaces that ask for reflection and care.
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