Ideas are fun.
They scurry about your brain like a pack of preschoolers bouncing off the walls, full of energy and potential. In their youth and exhuberance they carry with them unrestrained potential and freedom. To be around them is exhilerating and the experience reminds us of the endless potential that exists all around us.
But ideas, like people, are not meant to stay kids forever. As cute and fun as ideas are, their impact is limited.
Ideas want to grow. They need to mature to realize their full potential. In order to serve their highest good, ideas need to live and interact with the world to figure out where and how they fit.
This is when your ideas become teenagers.
They are no longer the cute little ideas you remember. They are moody and beligerent. They demand independence and attention at the same time. Oh, and they need to be fed…a lot.
They have faults and cracks. Their skin is changing. Their voice is changing. There are parts of that child that exist but more and more those parts are buried underneath a new identity. You wish they were more like you and you wish they were less like you.
Most terrifying of all, you’re not sure if they’ll make it in the big bad world.
This realization tends to coincide with finding reasons why your ideas will fail, why they are not good enough, and why you should keep them inside.
But just like a 27 year old living in their parents basement, what kind of life does an idea have locked in your head?
Ideas don’t do you or the world any service by existing as a sacred object protected in the walled garden of your mind. Your ideas only serve their true purpose in the world, connecting with people. Even if it means they will ultimately fail.
Like children, ideas do not come to serve us and our sense of accomplishment. Ideas come to serve the world. We’re just here help them along.
To play with them…
To walk with them…
To let them fall…
To lift them up…
To brush them (and ourselves) off and try again…
In as much as it is our job to shepard them, and idea’s job is to get us out into the world doing what we we are here to do (right now).
They live so we live.
They become what they are so we can too.
Time for both of you to step out into the world.