Drive someplace new without using your GPS, notice what you see.
A 5 year old practicing Tai Chi with her grandfather on a porch.
A lime tree growing among the oaks in a park.
A street named Twiggly Wiggly Way.
A shaft of sunlight that illuminates the steps to a subway entrance
so incandescently that for a moment it suggests a train journey might be holy.
An office of a veterinarian named Dr. Bark.
A beggar on the corner with a sign that reads:
‘Need gas money for my Lexus.’
You would have missed every one of these, had you activated the prescribed efficiency of your car’s GPS.
Truth is, we find our ideas by getting lost.
It’s by allowing our imaginations to run down alleyways and into brick walls that we discover the persistence of our creative voice.We build our storehouses of accrued wisdom through daily encounters with the real world, each a pearl waiting for the day we will polish it into something supremely insightful.
So get lost.
Especially now that the speed and precision of marketing’s ever-shinier toys drop us so glibly into the laps of our customers, all too often with nothing remarkable to say.
The same essential tech and data exchange that tracks and speeds us to our destinations in our cars.
Far more as passengers than as drivers.
– Ian Mirlin
