Field For Thought

Becky’s out of town for a few days so it’s just been me and the kids and lots of divergent thinking.

We spent most of Saturday and a few hours on Sunday in a field full of construction supplies. The neighborhood to the rear of ours was only partially built when the recession halted construction entirely. Concrete tubes, gaskets and hoses, pvc piping litter a field there – all abandoned until the market and our city rebounds.

To some people this place is no doubt an eyesore…

Construction Supplies

…evidence of a limping economy

Concrete tubes

…a construction graveyard, failure, rubbish and rocks.

Rocky field

Lots of rocks.

Rocks

But my kids saw a bee hive.

Bee hive

And bees buzzing.

Bee

They rode a tank, shimmied down a chimney, peeked out of their submarine, crept quietly past a sleeping giant’s mouth.

Tank

And those rocks?

Toucans.

Toucan

Clouds.

cloud

Llamas.

Llama

A school bus.

bus

Are you tired of this yet?

They weren’t.

They made tools. And more tools. And a tool box.

toolbox

And went back to work.

On a cat.

Cat

A sheep.

sheep

Then they climbed out of the Grand Canyon, a crater on an alien planet, up the side of a building like spies and ninjas and bugs, onto a waiting ship to make a getaway with their pockets full of treasure.

poles

This is divergent thinking – the ability to conceive numerous answers.

This is the kind of thinking that got the Apollo team home from the moon. It gave us jazz and airplanes and velcro and vaccines. Divergent thinking could someday remedy AIDS and cancer – and cholera in Haiti. Divergent thinking may even turn a field full of rocks and bee hives and tanks into homes.

We’re all born divergent thinkers. But then we grow up and dumb down.

Do my kids have to?

Thanks to William Guice for posting this video first.

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