Leadership Legacy

3An Antidote to Fear

‘Curiosity, to me, feels like the antidote to fear’

This revelatory sentence, spoken by YeSeul Kim in our interview for this book, made me pause, not just in that moment but for weeks, no, for months afterwards. I am still reflecting on it as I write this chapter. It hints at curiosity's potential to transform both individuals and society. It reframes curiosity as existing on the edges AND in liminal spaces.

It demonstrates that curiosity itself is a living, breathing paradox.

Kim embodies the paradoxical nature of curiosity: her ability to exist in multiple states simultaneously as a global citizen with ancestral roots spanning East and West. She was born in Korea and raised in Guam, a US territory in the Pacific with a rich mix of cultures. In middle school, she and her family relocated to a low-income area in the United States with a predominantly Black and Hispanic population. As a first-generation, low-income, Korean-American, a familiar frustration is present in her voice as she shares the continued mispronunciation of her name (pronounced Yeh-Sul) and the racial and gender stereotyping that shadows her journey, despite her career accolades. Kim reflects: ‘Curiosity is almost a privilege to arrive at. If you don't have psychological safety, you can't have trust; without trust, you can't have curiosity’.

A complex relationship between curiosity and intergenerational trauma reveals another paradox in how patterns are transmitted across time and cultures. ...