Let’s start off by being curious about the phrase: Curiosity kills the cat.

The meaning of this phrase seems pretty obvious: don’t go poking your nose into other people’s affairs, and don’t be overly inquisitive about things which don’t concern you, as it will only cause trouble.

As Patrice Robert’s said:

Drink water and mind your business!

Interestingly though, the phrase began life quite differently as: Care killed the cat. The word care, in this phrase found as early as 1598 means worry or sorrow. Based on this info, it is really worry or sorrow that killed the cat and not meddling!

In conclusion, the phrase ‘curiosity killed the cat’ appears to have been a mutation of a far earlier expression, ‘care killed a cat’, meaning that excessive worry rather than inquisitiveness will lead to harm.

And now you know!

What about mommunes?

I heard this term for the first time this morning chatting with a friend. We were talking about people who were considering living off the grid, and others who were anti-establishment, wanting to disentangle themselves from the systems and processes of civil society.

So what is a mommune? Single moms living together to save money. Who knew?

In his book ‘A Curious Mind’, Brian Grazer shares:

Curiosity requires a certain amount of bravery – the courage to reveal you don’t know something, the courage to ask a question of someone…but it repays you by building up your confidence.

There is a very yin-yang quality about curiosity:

• It is a tool of engagement but it is also a path to independence of thought.
• It helps create collaboration, but it also helps give you autonomy.

We have access to more information, more quickly, like never before yet curiosity remains ‘wildly undervalued’ (to use Mr. Grazer’s expression) today.

Curiousity is often not encouraged in the places that we actually need it!

What if we started teaching – “How to harness the power of curiosity?”, first in schools from kindergarten coming forward, to universities and finally to the world of work?

• What if we started to answer the questions that children ask us, and help them find the answers when we don’t know them?
• What if we started asking questions of ourselves?
• What if we started treating questions from colleagues with respect and seriousness?
• What if we welcomed questions from our clients?
• What if we started questioning our recurring problems instead of assuming that we already know the solutions?

Questions are opportunities for the curiosity bug to kick in and unearth interesting ideas and solutions, that we may not have found, had we not been curious.

Questions are opportunities, not interruptions. Make it safe at home and at work, to be curious. Like a physicist or cosmologist in constant research mode, learning more and more, getting answers that are not always definitive, so too can we leverage its power in our lives and in our businesses to unleash the blossoming of ideas and possibilities that come with it!