Impossible Blueprints

“We’ve got to believe in our beautiful, impossible blueprints” – Doris Lessing

Some days, I get up with ideas. Big ideas. Limit-pushing, idealistic, unachievable ideas. Skyscrapers with glass facades that gleam in the sunlight, intended to raise standards and reveal resolutions hidden in the shadows. They develop in my head like a drawing. Always in images of the final product, perfectly overdone, complete with quoined corners and marble laden steps, monuments in my mind. I will sit with these ideas for days. Sourcing materials, researching construction, eventually realizing the breakdown isn’t reasonable. Time, energy, payoff – just aren’t there. A grand idea isn’t always a good one. The letdown sets in. The disappointment that my newest skyline addition can’t be what I imagined it to be. The realization that I fell short on ability, execution or sound mind. Frustration, self-doubt, and then acceptance. Only after acceptance can I take the monument down to a building – realign the goals. Maybe a well-built 4 story office building with a box bay window will suffice. A solid foundation on a budget. I’m short on time, maybe just a flip that needs fresh paint and landscaping. Practical.

Eventually, I get around to practical. I hate it. It feels cheap and unloved. It feels half-assed and half-hearted. It’s just enough to get the job done. Most people seem to be ok with ‘good enough’. I’m not. I know what the intent of the skyline was supposed to be. I know the possibility was out there. I just couldn’t create a proper blueprint. No one realizes I sold-out, fell-short and gave up on an opportunity to create or be something truly great. No one realizes these windows only reflect the light on the southwestern exposure from noon-two. Solutions will emerge slowly from this catalog selection, the shadows are plentiful. I move on. There will be other designs, other buildings, and different problems to solve.

It still takes me a while to get to the acceptance stage. I feel like I’m lowering my standards when I do. But it took me years to ever get to the “move on” stage. I might calm down enough to refocus, but that building would be in the back of my mind, it would be filed into “someday” in my head, and I’d never really stop working on it. I’d never really let myself off the hook for not pulling it off. I’d also never really get around to making it happen. The design would become irrelevant by the time I had it figured out.

I see this in Sawyer. I see the big thoughts, the constant inventing – the constant designing in his head. The buildings get mentally erected and his eyes light up. He knows exactly how they should look and what their purpose is to be. The disappointment and frustration come in huge waves when his creation isn’t possible. He has self-doubt when we have to tell him that his big idea isn’t practical, and we try to help him scale-down. He knows how it was supposed to be. He knows the outcome is half-hearted. His wheels turn, he finds materials and researches construction. The difference between us is his ability to deconstruct.

I woke up one Saturday and came downstairs to find him cutting the flaps off of a cardboard box. Markers, tape, and boxes scattered all over, his little hands holding large scissors.

“STOP! What on earth are you doing?!”

“What? I’m just making a candy machine”, he replied as if this is standard Saturday morning practice. He continued to cut.

To his extreme objection, I took the scissors away and I told him he would have to wait for his dad to build that, and that he should take this time to draw out what he wanted it to look like, and how it would work. He did. He wanted slots for multiple candy types, and labels and the ability to start and stop at the desired volume of candy distribution. BIG ideas. His dad got home later that day, I left to run errands and they spent an entire afternoon building a candy machine to his specs. I’m sure dad did more of it than Sawyer did, but it was not without Sawyers design and imagination. He woke up with an idea. A monumental idea. He wasn’t going to let it become an unachievable idea. He worked it backward, he discussed the options, he sourced the experience needed to help with the construction and he didn’t give up. There was not going to be a letdown. He took the skyscraper in his mind and instead of being overwhelmed by the scale and complexity, he took it in parts, in pieces and developed it. This wasn’t the last of his cardboard creations this year. He prefers cardboard to build with over Legos or blocks. I asked him ‘why’ the other day, as I was attempting to stunt his creativity in exchange for a clean house, and he said: “I can’t invent the same with toys that already exist.”

I completely understand this sentiment. I don’t want to do the same things everyone else is doing either. Never have. There’s no artistry in it, no personality, no sense of accomplishment. Self-pride is the motivation. It’s what keeps people like us going. It’s what makes the effort worth it. Without it, there’s a lackluster feeling where life starts to feel mundane and repetitive. Boredom quickly comes. Routine can often be the enemy. If you’re not taking something on because it infringes on your routine, then nothing great can ever happen. There’s a self-inflicted sense of obligation to make sure that is never the case. It comes with a side of stress.

Stress from constant thinking, stress from the analytical nature of solving the problem, stress from overextension and personal expectations. Being overwhelmed becomes such a way of life that on the days you aren’t, you don’t know what to do with yourself. There’s a discomfort in the quiet moment. I’d rather be anything than be bored.

Sawyer got bored this year in kindergarten. He had three years of pre-school before actual pre-school, which made actual kindergarten pretty uneventful. So, he joined the chess club. I couldn’t have been more proud of him that day. He wasn’t intimidated that he was so much younger than the other kids and he learned enough that he was able to teach me how to play, and let me win. He put himself out there and added something to his plate. But more than proud, I was excited for him. He was going to learn how to strategize, predict a few moves ahead, see and analyze the full board. He was going to play against his opponent, learn how they think, and learn how to plan. He’s going to learn how to see all the moving parts and see a blueprint in his mind, not just the finished product. This is a skill I’ve always struggled with. His monumental ideas will have an outlet, a way to come to life outside of his head. Maybe he won’t have to spend his life in the cycle of dreams that will only be dreams and executions that will forever be personal failures and disappointments. He’s developing a way out. An exit strategy. He’s paving the roads for his future skyline.

Sawyer,

When you started your candy machine in January, you just started cutting without a plan. Last week, you asked me for a few 2-liter soda bottles and some straps. You wanted to make a jetpack. You thought if we shook them up right before we put them on you when we uncapped them, you could fly. You thought it through. You took the idea, broke it down, and used the knowledge you had to create a plan. You were disappointed when I told you that it wouldn’t be enough force to make you fly, but you accepted it quickly, then asked how much force would be needed. You went back to the drawing board and decided it wasn’t something you could do on a Sunday afternoon. In a few short months, you’ve learned to hone your big ideas into achievable tasks, assess how achievable and determine if you have the time. Learning to be ok with this mental process took me years, and nothing excites me more than watching you figure this out before age 7, as it may save you from years of frustration and doubt. So as your ideas get bigger, as the buildings in your mind move from 10 stories to 30, never forget this process. Remember that an impossible dream only seems unachievable if you don’t take the time to strategize, find the practical center and build out from there. Don’t get discouraged, never give up, and never settle for simply “good enough”, for you have the mind and the tools to achieve great things. And for the moments you realize you need to scale down to the practical, I’ll be here to remind you why every cityscape needs an occasional apartment building or parking lot.

My wish for you this year is that you spend your lifetime inventing and creating. That you never give up on the vision of your skyline and that you will always remember the blueprint.

Happy Birthday to my first, truly successful, big idea: I love you.

-Mom

“The blueprint for success is inside you. It will stay there unless you take it out and create it”

-Larina Kase