I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.
-Dr. Suess
Hamburgers and fries just go together. Can you imagine chips without salsa? For some reason the human brain loves to categorize and organize all the information we take in. Our brains seem to do this seemingly without any effort on our part. We love things that go together. Mashed potatoes need gravy, and if you ask my Uncle Dean, macaroni and cheese needs ketchup, although I tend to disagree, ick. For the most part, there is nothing wrong with this natural human inclination. The world would be quite chaotic if we didn’t categorize and organize. Thank goodness CPA’s, accountants and other detail oriented people. How I made it through so many accounting and statistics classes I’ll never know. Anyway, while logic and organization are key components to success in just about everything, sometimes it’s good to take brief vacations from logic and organization and explore the world of what could be.
When we watch movies, especially Sci-Fi movies, we are required to accept a fictional world with fictional rules. It’s not very fun to watch Star Wars or Lord of the Rings if you spend the whole time thinking about how lightsabers and rings with special powers are not possible. Most people don’t have any problem with suspending belief while watching a movie or reading a good book, but in the context of real life people tend to be more cynical and realistic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting a prolonged LCD trip void of common sense. What I am suggesting is taking moments out of your day or week to suspend responsibility, logic and organization.
Ideas are rooted in passion and emotion. Think about the process of making a baby. No one is thinking about how a baby is made while they are in the middle of making a baby. That just wouldn’t be fun. A baby is the result of an intense moment of passion. Creativity is just like making a baby. If you are constantly preoccupied with the hard materials of life you will never have time to imagine what could be. This is the power of the architect, for example. The building of a house requires an architect’s imagination and a builder’s ability to take that imagination and turn it into an organized step by step process that will eventually become a house.
What if hamburgers didn’t come with fries? What if fries weren’t made from potatoes? What if you put chocolate syrup on a steak? What if Fried Chicken and cereal could be eaten together? What if gasoline came in single serve boxes?
Go ahead, try it. It’s kind of fun once you get started. Take a few minutes and come up with the most ridiculous pairings you can possibly think of. AND DON’T PRE-JUDGE YOURSELF. Even as I was making the list above, I gave myself pause when the idea of Fried Chicken and cereal popped into my head. I almost didn’t even put that in the paragraph. See how our minds work? Our mind has been so castrated by societal and cultural norms that it can be very hard to wax creative.
Check out my other posts.
When we watch movies, especially Sci-Fi movies, we are required to accept a fictional world with fictional rules. It’s not very fun to watch Star Wars or Lord of the Rings if you spend the whole time thinking about how lightsabers and rings with special powers are not possible. Most people don’t have any problem with suspending belief while watching a movie or reading a good book, but in the context of real life people tend to be more cynical and realistic. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not suggesting a prolonged LCD trip void of common sense. What I am suggesting is taking moments out of your day or week to suspend responsibility, logic and organization.
Ideas are rooted in passion and emotion. Think about the process of making a baby. No one is thinking about how a baby is made while they are in the middle of making a baby. That just wouldn’t be fun. A baby is the result of an intense moment of passion. Creativity is just like making a baby. If you are constantly preoccupied with the hard materials of life you will never have time to imagine what could be. This is the power of the architect, for example. The building of a house requires an architect’s imagination and a builder’s ability to take that imagination and turn it into an organized step by step process that will eventually become a house.
What if hamburgers didn’t come with fries? What if fries weren’t made from potatoes? What if you put chocolate syrup on a steak? What if Fried Chicken and cereal could be eaten together? What if gasoline came in single serve boxes?
Go ahead, try it. It’s kind of fun once you get started. Take a few minutes and come up with the most ridiculous pairings you can possibly think of. AND DON’T PRE-JUDGE YOURSELF. Even as I was making the list above, I gave myself pause when the idea of Fried Chicken and cereal popped into my head. I almost didn’t even put that in the paragraph. See how our minds work? Our mind has been so castrated by societal and cultural norms that it can be very hard to wax creative.
Check out my other posts.
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