The other day, my partner and I went for a sketch in the local park. We threw down the picnic blanket, cracked open the pencil case, picked a few trees and just started to draw. Sketching always teaches me something even though, most of the time, I’m deeply unhappy with how the sketches look by the end.
One of the best things about sketching, though, is the permission it gives me to be outside. Because inevitably, after a few sketches, I lose some interest in what I intended to draw and, with nothing else to do, I lay down at stare at the clouds for a while.
It’s a cliche for a reason but whenever I give myself permission to do this, something magical happens. In response to the clouds moving and shape-shifting as the wind moves them along my mind can’t help but give them form – a name. It might be a crocodile, a turtle, a horse… it might even be all three of them in the same cloud over the space of a few minutes.
Soon enough, I need to pick up my sketch book again. Not because I want to draw the clouds, but because I’ve had an idea – a story I want to tell.
I almost hate how prevalent this ‘advice’ is because it’s so simple. Unlocking one’s imagination should be more difficult, shouldn’t it? Isn’t there some sort of effort I need to put in to enable one of humanity’s most powerful and transformative gifts? Shouldn’t I need to study for 10,000 hours, get a degree, be mentored and work really hard for many years before the pay off?
It seems like a shortcut or some sort of cheat code for life, but simply giving myself permission to daydream – to stare at clouds sometimes – is one of the surest paths I know exists to improve my imaginative thinking. Maybe it’s prevalence isn’t something to be admonished, but perhaps a sign of a more universal human experience.