The Origin of Ideas

 

Ideas do not come from screens. That much I know. And yet I am drawn here - to this little, loyal rectangle - moment after moment, day after day. To sit and to sift and to stare and to blink and to begin. To begin to make sense of something that has happened or something I want to happen. To begin to ask a question that has started to buzz, to burrow. The screen, for me, is vital. It is the place I come, cozy and circumscribed, to feel and to heal and, above all, to be real, and maybe just maybe to help some of you do the same.

But the thing I need to remember, the thing I am going to work on remembering, the thing we all need to remember, is that the screen is, ultimately, no more than a tool. A tool to create and to communicate and to connect. It is not where the big, unwieldy, juicy ideas originate. Surfing around in this ether can be stimulating on some level, it can help us connect dots in our skies and in our souls, but it does not nourish us. (Or does it?)

Ideas? I believe they come from somewhere else. A wilderness, precious and precarious, of old school thinking and old school communion with self and other and world. This wilderness, I'm pretty sure, is not made up of pixels.

But I suppose I could be wrong?

Where do you think ideas originate? How much time do you spend with screens?