New Ideas

The second day of celebration is underway, and I once again find myself with a somewhat easy day to celebrate. "Run it Up the Flagpole and See Who Salutes" Day is the holiday for January 2nd, and I at first thought "I have no flag or flagpole, and I hardly want to wait around all day under one and count who salutes as I can probably ballpark that number at somewhere under 10." Luckily for me and my immune system (it's 30ºF outside and a little windy), that is not what the holiday is truly about.

No, "Run it up the flagpole (and see who salutes)" is an old phrase from around 60 years ago and means something to the affect of "Put out a new idea to see the general reaction to it." Much easier than standing under a cold pole in the winter resisting the urge to see if my tongue would really stick to it, right? If you truly thought hard about it, we are at no shortage for new ideas, but our filtering system has gotten so quick at auto-deleting the ones we deem as "stupid", "inefficient", or "incredibly life-threatening" that we may never run them by anybody. We have also become a little quick to shoot down others' ideas if they inconvenience us. In simpler terms, we've replaced our childhood's "What if" with a grown up "How about not?".

So today, I will resist no urge to suppress any idea I have, no matter how outlandish. If I think of a solution, I will recommend it instantly. All thoughts of innovation will be noted and then scrutinized by others, but I will have at least tried. None of my ideas may work, but I will have contributed all that I possibly could, and who knows, maybe pieces of my ideas would work with another person's idea.

After all, it would seem to me that other people's strange ideas have worked at at least some level of success for them.

1879

1908

2004

Thanks for reading!

~Kyle