On Idea

Sometimes, I think about what “idea” is. Idea is a like a bridge between islands of knowledge. It is a path not readily available, but visible all of a sudden. It is there if it is, not there if it is not. You can’t describe an idea before having it. You can’t feel it coming, you can’t plan for it. It comes or it doesn’t come.

Like everything else, idea needs an environment to come into existence. It usually needs one to acquire new knowledge and have a questioning mind while doing so. Accepting knowledge as it is usually won’t help on the other hand questioning and reflecting on what is being learnt increases the chances of connecting different, seemingly unrelated pieces of knowledge and create a bridge between them all of a sudden. Idea, is this connection.

If believed to be worthwhile, this connection which just came to existence usually warrants an action. Without an action, an idea is like “love” never told or like the fallen tree in a forest, no one saw, no one heard. Its existence won’t make a difference pretty much like its absence wouldn’t.

Absence of action may reveal two different outcomes:

• The idea might not be worthwhile to warrant an action
• The person, who came up with the idea, has bad judgement and thinks it is a bad idea.

If it is the first outcome above, the owner of the idea is mature enough to be able to validate the idea. A seemingly simple idea, might be very difficult to validate and the level of maturity depends not on the complexity of the idea but the complexity of the required validation. The person that judges the idea has to be bigger than the idea in order to decide it’s faith, which happens rarely. Ideas are usually bigger than the people who came up with them.

Maybe an idea has two dimensions. First dimension is for the level of complexity in describing the idea (so others can understand it). Second dimension is about proving that the idea is going to work without actually implementing the idea.

If implementing the idea is the only way to prove it, as sometimes it is, the unlikely good outcome will have to outweigh the likely bad outcome. At least for the person / people who will benefit or suffer from the outcome.

Idea, is like falling in love. It happens all of a sudden.