Have you ever wondered where that expression comes from? As an immigrant child who learned English as a second language, I often miss the intent of or misunderstand idioms. Taking their meaning literally often causes a great deal of laughter in those around me.
As I was thinking about curiosity and its roles in life and relationships, this expression came to mind. I began to wonder where it came from and what it intended to teach or express.
"Curiosity killed the cat" is an expression that was to warn of the dangers of unnecessary investigation or experimentation, beginning around the 1600s. It also implies that being curious can sometimes lead to danger or misfortune. A second half of the expression was added later (in the 1900s, I believe).
Wonderings
The expression got me wondering if it unintentionally taught us that curiosity was a dangerous thing?
When I’m working with clients, I often talk about curiosity. Curiosity can actually serve a very important purpose in relationships as well as in personal well-being. Being willing to be curious can change the course of a conversation, can change our experience of a situation, and allow us to suspend judgement.
Curiosity and emotions
Often, emotions can be frightening, especially intense emotions or those that we label as negative. I encourage people to view emotions as delivery mechanisms for information. If – instead of judging our emotions and trying to make them go away, trying to stuff them so we don’t have to feel them, or viewing them as something negative about our character – we approach them with curiosity, asking what message they are trying to give us, emotions can actually be our friends.
Irvin Yalom said that “When people don’t have any curiosity about themselves, that is always a bad sign.” The movie “Inside Out” affirms this and does such a great job of showing how emotions (Joy, Fear, Anger, Disgust and Sadness) are indicators of what is going on inside us and are actually helpful to navigate life.
Being curious about our emotions as they arise allows us to experience them and learn from them. “Curiosity is the wick in the candle of learning” (William Arthur Ward).
If we don’t need to shut them down or push them away, but we instead learn to welcome them and we engage with them to learn about our experience, it gives us a greater sense of control. It also gives us the ability to learn from the information we gather, rather than feeling like the emotions control or overwhelm us.
Curiosity and relationships
Likewise, on a relational level, one of the greatest communication traps is making assumptions and allowing defensiveness to get in the way. When we hear what someone says, when we make assumptions that we know what their intent is, when we have our defenses come into play, and then act based on that assessment, this is often where conversations get derailed.
If instead of making assumptions, we can allow curiosity to guide us, we may well find out that what we thought we were hearing is actually not the message the other was intending to communicate. When curiosity allows us to ask questions, we have a better chance of understanding the other’s intent and having a conversation that draws us closer together, rather than one that drives us apart.
How can curiosity help us?
On a personal level, curiosity might be noticing the emotions we’re experiencing and wondering about what those emotions are trying to tell us. Self-compassion allows those emotions to just be, rather than to be judged. For example, “It makes sense that I might feel (emotion) because (this is what is happening right now).”
I often describe emotions as the dashboard of a vehicle. When an indicator light goes on, it goes on for a reason. In the same way, when an emotion shows itself, there is always a reason. Greeting the emotion with curiosity is what will help us make sense of it and help us navigate it in a helpful way.
On a relational level, if we can hear what the other person is saying as an indicator light on their dashboard – something that tells us about what they are feeling or experiencing – rather than as an attack on us, we have a much better chance of having a collaborative conversation.
This can be tricky when we feel like we are being accused of something that we didn’t even do or didn’t even intend. However, if we can hear our partner’s emotions as messengers of what is going on for them, it will allow us to ask questions to find out what is going on for them. If the emotions are, in fact, based on false assumptions on our partner’s perspective, we have opportunities to offer clarification and explanation. However, if we do not listen to their emotions and try to understand them, what we see as offering clarity will just sound like we’re not listening and just defending ourselves to our partner.
Parting contemplations
So, we can see that curiosity is something that benefits and enhances both our relationships with others as well as our own lives because it can lead to healthier communication and better self-care. Living life with healthy communication, taking good care of ourselves and our relationships, in the end, is what that truly satisfies. As Eleonor Roosevelt said, “I think, at a child’s birth, if a mother could ask a fairy godmother to endow it with the most useful gift, that gift should be curiosity.”
May you find ways to free your curiosity and lean into learning.
~ Haide