Allowing the Awkward Phase

The best new ideas might be too quickly tossed

I am in the early stages of welcoming into being ideas for a new way of living in the world. I want to see more smiles and joyful collaborations on remedies to the many crises now facing us. There has been far too much harm done by a few greedy players. Their time is ending and the time of the people is on the horizon and quickly coming into view.

adrienne maree brown looked to the science fiction of Octavia Butler for how to shape change and change worlds. I am feasting on her book, Emergent Strategy, now. I give it credit for inspiring this effort of my own: to feed myself the brilliant ideas of others and be open to my higher alchemist to conjure up something new and marvelous.

Yesterday I gathered certain books onto a rolling cart. Some of them I selected because they are perennial favorites but may not ever be referred. No matter. They have informed my way of looking at the world already. Ah! But my intuition cautions me here. I must be open-eyed and willing to toss old thinking to allow new thoughts to emerge. If something new doesn’t sit well with something old, it might be appropriate to toss the old. I will discern that at the time.

The writing maxim “killing your babies” came to mind and I found this in a Hazlit.net review of Ed Catmull’s book Creativity, Inc. Linda Besner shares

The baby metaphor for the creative process, like all metaphors, has its limitations, as well as its ambiguities. For Catmull, it’s the newness of an idea that makes it resemble a baby, whereas in the usual “kill your babies” formulation it’s the creator’s attachment to an idea that makes the metaphor. But Catmull’s take on it—that new ideas have to be allowed an awkward phase, and need to be protected while they fumble towards maturity—has the benefit of encouraging experimentation. Cutting or abandoning a complex idea too early can mean resorting to conventional formulations, and if the advice is too deeply internalized it can mean never allowing oneself to take stylistic risks at all.

Part of our job,” Catmull writes, “is to protect the new from people who don’t understand that in order for greatness to emerge, there must be phases of not-so-greatness.” (emphasis, mine.)

It is early yet for me in this endeavor. I will put my old favorites on the back side of the cart, aware that they may not belong. And I will take Catmull’s wisdom to heart. I am not looking for conventional formulations. Quite the contrary. I am looking for some greatness to emerge and must allow my thought developments to go through awkward phases. God knows this is what we humans are well known for.