The most crucial quality I look for when choosing people to surround myself with is curiosity. It is my first determinant when hiring employees, agreeing to work with clients, and initiating friendships. I find those who are habitually curious about things more interesting. They bring value to the relationships and joy to my life. The people I know who are courageously curious find the world joyfully intoxicating and enriching the lives of those around them.
Idle curiosity amounts to finding things that amuse or entertain us. Active curiosity is different. It enables creativity and adaptability, fuels learning and problem-solving, and spurs personal growth. Courageous curiosity means taking risks and facing the unknown by deliberately engaging with the world in learning mode.
I find incurious people stubborn, obstinate, and tedious. As clients, they are uncoachable and generally insufferable. Besides being wrong, people who believe they know all they need to are toxic to their organizations and personal relationships. When people operate in knowing mode, they lack the resourcefulness to be resilient, making them dangerous to themselves and others. Interestingly, people avoid curiosity because they believe it is dangerous. Perhaps people really do think that “curiosity killed the cat.”
It appears the saying was directed at nosy people’s idle curiosity – suggesting they mind their own business. When you add the part suggesting “satisfaction brought him back,” it begins to make better sense. Curiosity feels dangerous because it is the gateway to the unknown. However, the experience of satisfaction from accomplishments such as making an important discovery is the greatest source of human joy.
The saying reflects the highly noticeable innate curiosity of people’s cats. Children are similarly curious. But, more often than not, our inquisitiveness wanes as we pass into adulthood. Many adults view childlike curiosity as unserious and frivolous – and instead prefer certainty and focus on more serious things. Yet the ability to be childlike in our thinking enables us to engage the level of imagination that splits atoms, places people on the moon, cures cancer, and challenges the status quo with innovations that come at an ever-increasing rate. We don’t have to teach children to be curious, but adults must learn to rediscover their curiosity. A lack of imagination and the need for courage separate those who cling to the past, and fear change from those who embrace uncertainty and drag the rest of us into the future.
I have yet to discover a way to stir the curiosity in anyone who refuses to be thirsty for the things they need to know but don’t. However, contrary to the old, worn adage, you can lead a horse to water and make them drink if you work them hard enough to make them thirsty. I can imagine it is possible without coercion to instill a passion for learning in people who stubbornly resist —when they realize that with a healthy dose of courageous curiosity, the world is joyfully intoxicating, rewarding, enormously satisfying, and brimming with hope and possibility.
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