Such a question rightfully invites a quick reflection on what possibilities lie outside of one’s usual. One does something new by going to a new place or doing a new thing—something unknown and extraordinary. Novelty is a panacea, almost miraculous, really. Yet if one tries to ask what exactly it is trying to cure, an initial conclusion might be that the lack of a clear answer is one of those ‘illnesses’ to be rid of. Novelty is good, maybe even more than just a cure-all to a vague existential dilemma. What is interesting is when the search for it comes after attempts at trying to create certainty.
When one looks at the perpetuity of structures and the equally endless pursuit to get to somewhere or something with them, the idea might go as follows: figure out the structure, figure the end, elaborate the means to that end, discipline oneself towards that end. Hence, each waking up becomes a continuation of a much longer marathon that one braces oneself for. Every day is a battle for the war that is life. Wake up and follow the path if you want to be closer to that destination. This idea comes in many names for different fields: outcome-based approaches, design-thinking, cost-benefit analyses, etc. One has a goal and then a means which requires a good mix of accuracy and precision.
I have been exploring ideas on imagination and development. The latter is a much stranger experience: the concept of development itself is bothersome but the stories are alluring. It is a solid frame that seems to seek for a perfect picture. Sometimes I wonder if a clean ‘philosophical’ concept of imagination would be just that very picture, so there is this often inevitable inclination to do this exploration systematically. After all, one is a clear, tangible system, and the other is a concept that can probably morph into anything with enough skill or force. I look at my overall project and think in terms of word counts and timings and deadlines. Then I rack my brain for ways to make myself more effective vis-à-vis those word counts and timings and deadlines. Each opportunity to explore comes up against a set of criteria that determines whether we have been moving closer or farther from the end.
One takes something free—exploration, writing, painting, thinking, living—and puts it into this double-bonded structure that is unbreakable but that can break one if one is not good enough for it. Regardless, the promise is that by following through then one will surely reach the end, and if you are not, then you are probably just not trying hard enough.
Then something as silly as that question—”When was the last time you did something new?”—comes across the table. The mind immediately jumps to a new place, a new meal, a new activity, which, on the surface, definitely seem to be a step backwards, but nonetheless, there is the idea that it might very well be the kind of step that launches one forward by miles, the shortcut to get one out of this admittedly uninterestingly difficult path. Something that is different from this method we have created.
I think the miracle comes in the realisation that the ‘uninterestingly difficult path’ has never been such inherently. Once upon a time it was new; once upon a time, one was born into a strange world, with its structures and all, but had somehow a capacity of freedom. Hence, from a mere babe it was possible to grow exponentially, at a rate difficult to specify, and to become something strange, unknown, but alluring in so many ways: a human being that can perceive both the infinite and the finite, as well as a sense of the connection in between those.
Very simply, if I take say a writing session and forgot momentarily the number of words I needed to come up with or any particular concepts that I have to discuss within in and just face that blank page and let time pass on its own, then I think that sufficiently constitutes a ‘new thing’ does it not? Similarly, if one wakes up in the same room of the same house in the same city without any mind for routines or plans, that in itself is the supposed panacea. Would it work? Perhaps that depends on what it is supposed to cure in the first place.
The point, at least I think for now, is that the difference between the certain and the uncertain can sometimes be silly. It may also be possible that those structures one is trying to figure out are just things that pass and go, like the wind, like concepts, like inspiration. If the supposed cause of the illness is the same as the cure, in essence then maybe if one seeks to escape cycles then one can simply let cycles be. One may go elsewhere.