When we re-arrange our bedroom or office we are rearranging the possibilities for connection. Stepping into a cathedral for the first time, exploring a distant culture, or taking a new route all inspire something within us, because they are novel.
As Michael Pollan puts it “There is another word for this extremist noticing – this sense of first sight unencumbered by knowingness, by the already-been-theres and seen-that’s of the adult mind – and that word, of course, is wonder”
We all have the power to shift our environment in a way to facilitate a mental feedback loop, where we are able to birth new connections between nodes. Whether it is something as simple as rearranging your office or bedroom to provoke a novel experience or taking a new route home.
It’s these simple hacks that allow for new surrealist juxtapositions or cross-pollination of ideas and gives birth to the unthinkable. It starts with a curiosity and the power to change your relationship of mind to environments, and this is just another key to the power of provoking wonder and ideas.