The ‘I don’t know’ synchro

We spent most of the day on a recent Sunday trying to figure out something that should be relatively simple – the format and general content for a journal focusing on creativity. With journals, most of the pages are blank. Our job basically is to guide and inspire, but do so briefly.

After going back and forth with ideas and getting frustrated, we decided we liked to create much more than pick apart the process of what we do. Sure, we were trying to create something, but we kept fumbling the nuts and bolts and it was driving us crazy. I mentioned to Trish that we should look for a synchronicity to guide us. But what I noticed was that both of us would mutter from time to time: ‘I don’t know…I don’t know.’ I mentioned it to her and she said, “Well, it’s true. We don’t know.”

Meanwhile, one of my ideas for the journal was to include a quote on inspiration or creativity for each of our entries. So after gathering nearly 75 quotes to choose from, I accidentally opened Google Reader and noticed Mike Perry’s post for that day was a list of quotes about inspiration.

Curious, I pulled it up the list. One of the entries was a lengthy quote by a poet named Wislawa Szymborska. Surprisingly, the last line read:

“Whatever inspiration is, it’s born from a continuous ‘I don’t know.'”

So, there was our synchronicity. And, yes, in spite of our negative-sounding  mutterings–or maybe because of them–we finally came up with a feasible outline before the day was done.