The challenge of stretching a mind beyond its original dimensions.

Man's mind once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimension.

Oliver Wendell Holmes

Sounds great and inspiring, doesn't it?  Except for one problem: stretching one's mind to take in new ideas is really hard!

I'm back from vacation and starting up with a new German class this week.  After class today, a couple other native English-speakers and I were talking about the very difficult mental battle we've had to fight to get this language into our heads. 

No, it wasn't about the huge amounts of vocabulary, or how German words get really long. The problem actually sounds really silly in English--we had an awful time learning how to say "the" in German!

Doesn't sound too complicated, right?  Except that Germans have 8 completely different ways (der, des, dem, den, das, die, der, or deren) to say "the" and 16 different rules for which "the" goes where!

(Don't worry, this does relate to creativity!)

When making a sentence, we have to think about whether the "the" is singular or plural; masculine, feminine or neuter; and where "the" is in the sentence! 

Even though this is easy for native German speakers, it's extremely tough for native English speakers to get our minds around.

"What do you mean there is more than one way to say "the"???" our minds scream at us.  And then we experience the painful process of staring at our sentences, completely clueless about what form to use.

The reason this is important for creative enthusiasts is that this is a very similar process to accepting new ideas.

When someone comes up with a radically new concept, our minds automatically jump into "that won't work" mode.  It doesn't fit with our current way of thinking and we have a hard time seeing how it could be possible.

Often, new ideas are so foreign to our current understanding of the world that they just don't make sense. 

• After all, when computers were the size of rooms, it was crazy to think that that there would be a huge market for them someday!

• And the whole idea of Starbucks must have sounded ludicrous at first!  Who would buy coffee on their way to work when they could have it for pennies at home--right when they woke up and needed it most.

• Can you even imagine how the concept of the first car must have sounded?  "Now, we're going to make a carriage that moves without a horse, and will actually be able to go faster and further than a horse is capable of running."

But, as those ideas had a chance to sink in and people learned more about how they worked, the ideas began to feel normal. Today, no one blinks an eye when talking about those "mind-boggling" ideas.  The crazy idea isn't so crazy anymore because our minds stretched to take in another new concept.

This is a process that never ends: countless new ideas compete for acceptance everyday.  Each one faces the "there's no way that could work" challenge. Each one faces its share of blank stares and rejections.  Each one goes through the painstaking mental battle of being accepted or rejected by our brains.

It's never easy--if you want to see how tough it can be, come with me to my German course(!)--but luckily, the pain of accepting a new idea only happens one time for each idea.  Once our minds have been stretched by something new, they never go back to their original thinking.

Comments

[fun-da-mental magazine]

When someone comes up with a radically new concept, our minds automatically jump into "that won't work" mode...

It's probably also FEAR! If we are confronted with something new, many people's first reaction is a fearful one.

cheers
fox

[shaji.k]

A nice post, katie. i encountered similar problems while learning french. it's agonising at the start. As a student of ideas and innovation, you know better than us how painful and frightful it is for people to change established patterns of thinking. we hate uncertainty and prefer to reinforce familiar situations. the mind wants to be a gramaphone record, repeating the same tunes endlessly. i eagerly look forward to an adventure of ideas with you as the guide and role-model.