Did Curiosity Really Kill the Cat?

I have always felt there was something limiting about the phrase “curiosity killed the cat.” As though curiosity was reckless rather than necessary. But in my experience, curiosity has often helped me find the missing piece of the puzzle hidden under assumptions that once felt certain. 

In the world that we inhabit today, we give ourselves very little permission to be curious. We are often busy chasing models, frameworks and structures that promise certainty, a path that appears clear before we have even begun walking it. 

Why an Expedition and Not a Blueprint?

This takes me back to 1st episode of the podcast, Why a Women Leadership Expedition? where Julia Middleton, founder of Women Emerging, explains why the WE movement chose the language and methodology of an expedition instead of the certainty of a model or blueprint. The aim was never to arrive with ready-made answers, but to gather women across generations and geographies, sectors and specialisms, abilities and aspirations, backgrounds and beliefs and to collectively “find an approach to leadership that resonates with them.”  

A blueprint assumes the destination is already known. It values certainty, structure and predictability. An expedition, however, depends on curiosity, it leaves room for discovery, contradiction and change.

That distinction sits at the heart of the Women Emerging Expedition. The movement actually began with a feeling that the world needed to change, and that perhaps new ways of leading could only emerge through collective exploration rather than predetermined answers. As Julia reflects in the first episode of the Women Emerging podcast –  

“I think most of us had this deep sense that the world just has to change. But we also have a deep sense that it’s not going to change much if it’s got the same ‘leaders’ as it’s always had. The ‘leaders’ we have, if they’re going to produce change, need energy. They need new blood. They need the innovation, the discord, the energy of new blood coming in. And what better source of new blood than women emerging as the ones who lead, to help drive the change that humanity so clearly needs.” — Julia Middleton, Episode 1: Why a Women Leadership Expedition? 

That idea of exploration rather than imitation appears powerfully in Julia’s conversation with Vidya Shah, where they begin reflecting on whether women are often expected to fit existing leadership models rather than develop approaches that feel authentic to them. 

Julia Middleton: In your heart, do you think that women lead in a different way to men? 

Vidya Shah: I think so. I think I do. I mean, I can speak from personal experience. I lead differently from some of the men around me, and I also lead differently from some of the women around me. 

I also see that a lot of women particularly tend to imitate mostly other men, and do not give space [to themselves] because they feel they don’t have the space to give birth to their own vision of their own leadership. 

And I think one of the things I’m hoping that we expeditioners [Explorers] actually do is, is bring that out, allow ourselves to be more authentic and be more original or more comfortable in the way we perform our roles as leaders. 

Julia Middleton: You’re also very much a historian, aren’t you? So, do you think we’re going to be looking for an approach to leadership that resonates for women, that women in the past used to do? With your historical mind on, tell me. 

Vidya Shah: I think there are many, many lessons out there. I’ve been writing about some of that. Women writers in an age when women were not even allowed to go to school. And the earliest woman writer was probably a slave who wrote about her own experiences of being tortured for her religious beliefs…so, it shows a lot of courage from women from across the ages who’ve managed to express their opinion and show themselves as path breakers, in a sense, from times immemorial.  

In India, for example, there are a lot of queens and women leaders, whether it’s through the freedom struggle, whether it’s before that, who’ve emerged. And a lot has been written about that. 

But in one of my pieces of writing, I actually wrote about the Bengali women writers of the 19th century, and nobody has heard about them. But they actually ended up making a huge difference in the way their peers, especially women of their generation, began to look at education. 

And they were leaders in their own right, because they took incredible risks in going to school, in writing, in getting published in the 19th century in Bengali. 

So I think there’s so many great stories out there, lesser known, and I feel lesser known stories have greater power, because it gives us all, almost empowers us to feel that if she could do it in that era, with her background, I can definitely do it today. 

Julia Middleton: So, your own foundation has focused so very, very much on women’s empowerment. How do you think an Expedition can help play into that agenda? 

Vidya Shah: I think the best thing about an Expedition is that the way the expeditioners [Explorers] have been selected, they are women who are multifaceted. It’s not diversity for diversity’s sake just among us, you know. 

It’s the multifacetedness, the cultural perspectives that we all bring, the personal experiences that we all bring. And it’s this rich diversity. 

I mean, I’ve begun to realize that it doesn’t matter which socioeconomic background you belong to. The challenges are remarkably similar. The perspectives may be different. We may have overcome them in different ways. We may not have been able to overcome some. 

But I think by just going together, by being fellow journeywomen, we will learn a lot from each other.  

This thread of fellow journeywomen continues in Julia Middleton’s conversation with Dr Hinemoa Elder, who reflects on an expedition she joined to Antarctica with a large group of women scientists and researchers. What struck her most was not competition or division, but the way people learnt together. 

Dr Hinemoa Elder: “So I learnt a lot, we learnt a lot collectively, as in a particular way, and I’m thinking about how to express this, as a group of women, how we learnt together, how we learnt to find commonality and also respect the vast array of different languages that we speak and our different disciplines, because we’re all coming from different facets of science broadly.” 

As the conversation develops, the expedition itself slowly becomes a metaphor for another way of approaching leadership. Hinemoa describes travelling silently through Antarctica, hearing only cracking ice, rippling waves and the absence of sound. 

Dr Hinemoa Elder: “And so it takes away, the experience takes away a lot of the extraneous kind of distractions that we’re used to in everyday life, strips all that away.” 

That’s what going on an expedition does. It strips away distractions; it helps in listening curiously before deciding with certainty. 

So, maybe curiosity never killed the cat, it empowered it. 

About the Author

Kavya Misra is a writer and producer with a background in theatre, films and digital content. Her master’s in English literature forms the foundation for all her creative and corporate projects. In addition to this, Kavya has an extensive background in theatre. She has written and produced plays. She has also performed at festivals like Bharat Rang Mahotsav by National School of Drama, India and International Theatre Festival of Kerala, India.