It is said that curiosity killed the cat. I am not sure which or whose cat it was but anyone looking at this phrase is likely to avoid curiosity like plaque. If curiosity is something that kills, who would want it? I have even heard of people discouraging others from any attempts that tend towards curiosity citing the unfortunate cat. Come to think of it; is curiosity that bad? I don’t think so. In fact there is a silent rarely used rejoinder to the meme that says, ‘but satisfaction brought it back.’ The same cat that was killed by curiosity was brought back by satisfaction. I tend to agree largely with the insinuation that curiosity, while having the potential to harm/kill you, carries with it satisfaction that has capacity to bring you back to life.
The relevance of curiosity in personal development is one that may not be wished away. Curiosity is the urge to interrogate the existing norms and a yearning to have them replaced. Curiosity makes you want to understand much more about a phenomenon. Curiosity makes you ask, ‘why not?’, ‘what else?’ Most if not all great men and women of history and our time leveraged on the power of curiosity. Curiosity makes one want to see what would happen if an initiative were to be taken. Curious people are often not afraid to venture into new markets and new products just to see what happens. In the end, they reap fruits of deliberate action. Their urge to know what is likely to happen after an action is greater than that of fear.
Long ago, necessity was touted as the mother of invention. It meant that any one in need of something would invent a solution. Not after the world got infested with lazy people who are not fond of taking action, especially where such action is unfamiliar to them. Thereafter, curiosity became the new mother of invention. The people who keep trying out new things and get inquisitive eventually come up with an invention. It was Sir Isaac Newton’s curiosity that delivered the law of gravity to the world; or do you think that he was the first person to see apples falling on the ground? Of course not. He was, rather, the first one to become curious about it. In his mind, he was like, “why couldn’t it fly upwards?”. This triggered an in-depth understanding of gravity.
Nelson Mandela was undoubtedly not the first person to see Africans suffer during the apartheid era; however he decided to be curious about it. He decided to find out what would happen if they forfeited all else and engaged in a struggle for liberation. That curiosity, made the whole difference! William Thomas Green Morton was definitely not the first person to watch people going through painful ordeals during surgeries in the absence of anesthesia; women going through cesarean sections while bearing the raw pain! However, it is courtesy of his curiosity in answering the question, ‘why not have something that can suppress the pain?’ that we remember him to this day. His curiosity led to the use of modern day anesthesia. The examples are many.
Curiosity, much as it carries great possibility for invention, it can get your eyes poked! And this is what most people concentrate on and forget to take action; they fear the possible negative consequences of curiosity instead of focusing on the sweet victory it carries when successful. A story is told of a man who was passing by a mental hospital and happened to overhear the mad men across the fence shouting happily and chanting what sounded like an organized song ‘Thirteen…thirteen…..thirteen….’ This got the man curious. He wondered how mad people who are known to lack the ability to coordinate any meaningful activity could be singing in unison. He wondered about their choice of the number, ‘thirteen’. “Why not ‘twenty’?” he thought to himself.
He decided to look for an opening in the wall through which he could peep and have a glimpse of what the mad people were celebrating about. And yes, he got a small hole through the wall. He knelt down to peep but as soon as he had gotten the good position to see through the wall, his eye was poked and the song suddenly changed, ‘Fourteen….fourteen….fourteen…’ His curiosity left him with a poked eye. The little glimpse he had gotten of the mad men dancing was so pleasant that he decided to peep using the other eye in another hole…and he enjoyed.
Perhaps, you need to begin looking at curiosity differently because YOU CAN DO BETTER!
Roy Okonji,
Personal Devt Coach, Motivational Speaker and Author
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