Where Will Your Next Idea Come From?
Original Post: http://macromental.blogspot.com/2008/08/where-will-your-next-idea-come-f...
Through Their Eyes - author unknown
When I look at a patch of dandelions, I see a bunch of weeds that are going to take over my yard. My kids see flowers for Mom and blowing white fluff, you can wish on.
When I look at an old drunk and he smiles at me, I see a smelly, dirty person who probably wants money and I look away. My kids see someone smiling at them and they smile back.
When I hear music I love, I know I can't carry a tune and don't have much rhythm so I sit self-consciously and listen. My kids feel the beat and move to it. They sing out the words. If they don't know them, they make up their own.
When I feel wind on my face, I brace myself against it. I feel it messing up my hair and pulling me back when I walk. My kids close their eyes, spread their arms and fly with it, until they fall
to the ground laughing.
When I see a mud puddle, I step around it. I see muddy shoes and clothes and dirty carpets. My kids sit in it. They see dams to build, rivers to cross and worms to play with.
I wonder if we are given kids to teach or to learn from?
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As you know, almost anything can prompt an idea. I used to leave a handheld tape recorder by my bedside just in case I had one of thos "ah-ha!" moments in the middle of the night and didn't want to "lose" it. Then I realized that if it didn't stick, it was usually a bad dream.
Ideas, inspiration, innovation. They all come from different places, don't they? Its really hard to say where "any old idea" comes from.
Often, a good idea is lost because we (adults) have so much in our heads (data banks) that we allow previous experience (good, bad or indifferent) to influence our evaluation of a new "ah-ha!" In a way, that's why kids see things so differently. They aren't jaded (yet) and their minds aren't polluted with the "can't do's."
So, who thinks "out of the box?" In fact, how big is that box, anyway? How willing are you to "suspend belief" to allow you to evaluate a new idea with tossing it because something "didn't work before."
Well said and thanks. The Child Inside can still speak volumes of knowledge with did not know we had.
Should have been written as:
I wrote: So, who thinks "out of the box?" In fact, how big is that box, anyway? How willing are you to "suspend belief" to allow you to evaluate a new idea with tossing it because something "didn't work before."
That should have been: "...allow you to evaluate a new idea without tossing it because something "didn't work before."