Curiosity – Day 4

The old idiom, ‘Curiosity Killed the Cat’ has two terrible flaws. The statement conflates the story of a cat who runs into trouble with a body of water because of some kind of misadventure that put the creature in the path of harm. Oh dear, that may have been an Aesop story of a dog with a bone who saw a dog in the water with a bone. The dry dog wanted the wet dogs bone. He jumped in and realized there was no wet dog with a bone and so jumped out again quite dispirited that he was now wet and there was no extra bone to gnaw on. The dog completely overlooked the fact that it might nearly have drowned for nothing. Thinking in this vein it was Narcissus that came to a terrible end by looking into a pool of water. Of course he was set up by Nemesis who wanted to teach him not to spurn a woman – in this case Echo. Echo unfortunately put all she had into a single stupid guy to the point of wasting away, a shortcoming of many of us girls. Luckily most of us get over this potentially fatal flaw and become more like Nemesis. So just to put a tail on this, Narcissus fell in love with his own image (the dolt) and once he realized it was just an image and his love would forever be unrequited he cast himself into the water and drowned, presumably. Let’s try again. The old idiom, ‘Curiosity Killed the Cat’ has ONE terrible flaw. It is an incomplete account. (That’s not the flaw.) The full saying is,” Curiosity killed the Cat; but satisfaction brought it back.” That is more to my liking as it pairs well with the well established fact that cats have 9-lives. (I still see the cat falling into the water.) Moving on, the flaw is that the first part of the saying is a warning not to get your nose into other peoples’ business, but the original idiom communicates that despite the risks our curiosity may guide us to the fulfillment of a quest-ion. The common expression is pretty watered down right? Furthermore this saying is NOT the original. The saying morphed from “care killed the cat”, which refers more to worry than meddling. If curious look it up. You will find a fine statement about courage. Of course none of this has anything to do with creative curiosity, except maybe the courage part – and the risk part. But seriously now, let’s pause here at this intersection where curiosity and observation cross paths. This is where I think Serena Kovalosky is taking us, on an odyssey of creative exploration that leads us into the guilty pleasure of touching below the surface of things. I think I shall go swimming. Wanna come?