FICKLE LOCATION OF IDEAS

February 1st, 2021

Every week Tinkered Thinking releases a short story, and quite often the question comes in: how do you think of all these stories?  The short answer is: I have no idea.  But as with most short answers, the full answer is probably a bit more satisfying, and helpful.

Truth is there are no real muses or ‘sources’ of inspiration.  If they do exist they never seem to exist in the same place twice.  They are random, free floating, and in some sense, it might just require a little luck to run into one.  

But imagine for a moment you are walking down a crowded sidewalk, on you phone, in the middle of a stressed day, and you bump into someone. Chances are vast that you’d mutter a quick apology (or not) and more importantly go about your day.  Now consider if that person just happened to be someone you’d get along with very very well.  Perhaps ideal material for a friend, or even romance.  But of course, in that situation, no one slows down to take the time to investigate that possibility.  The situation and the possibility is a mismatch.  And for the most part we don’t even think about the possible opportunities lost.

This is where most half-decent ideas exist.  Despite the fact that ideas, whether it be for a story or a business are rather spontaneous in their timing, they do seem to be something that can be honed with practice.  Needing a story for each Sunday here on Tinkered Thinking primes much of the in-between time to be on the lookout for an idea.  There is in some sense a story-hunting algorithm that is always running in the background.  For example: the most recent parable popped into mind while in the middle of reading a book in a different language.  The parable had no relevance to what was going on in the book at all.

Thoughts pop into mind all the time, whether we want them or not.  Most often it’s the later, and because of this we are often running a different algorithm that is trying to keep things on track and therefore we’re trained to try and ignore a lot of what’s going on.  But this changes when we put in effort over time to try and be sensitive to ideas.

Suddenly ideas make sense in light of inspiration.  Inspiration means literally a ‘drawing in’. Think respiration.  Fact is, there are ideas everywhere, bouncing in and around our thoughts, our concentrations, distractions, externally too, in and between patterns and connections we see - everywhere.  The difference is whether we are drawing those little ideas in to the conscious gaze or not.