Imagine a room where a parent is sitting in a chair watching a show on television, with them is a child playing. The parent is trying to hear the show over the noise of the child’s play and says, “keep it down over there”. As time goes on the child does not listen, the parent gets frustrated, stands up, and walks over to a table. There is a newspaper and on the front of it is a picture of the world. They tear off the front page, ripping it to shreds, leaving the pieces on the floor. With the paper still falling, they say to the child, “put the world back together and be quiet”. Then they go back over to sit down and watch their show.
The child gets a tray and begins to put together the pieces on it. It only takes a few minutes until they are showing off their work. The parent, in amazement, looks at the completed picture losing all interest in the show, as they ask, “how did you complete that so fast”? The child responds, “It was simple, there is a picture on the back of a person, I put the person together and the world came together.”
So what we can learn here is like what one the masters of design thinking, Errol Gerson said, “that when you change the way you look at things, the things you look at will change. It’s everything since, without the power of being able to see things clearly, you have nothing. Isn’t that what clarity is? When you develop a skill to see the world the way it is, everything changes.”
Having been in both roles in my life of parent representing structure and the child as the solution I see this as a meaningful way to look at bringing things together through perspective. Regardless of the application in life, it all starts with you, as you have to be able to adapt, learn fast, and be clever with what you have. Then by iterating, we become more solid in who we are, how we support our ideas and those around us, and the meaning that comes from that. So here is an example of that in my own life, so you can see the point.
