Can you recognize an idea in disguise?
HE EMERGED FROM THE METRO AT THE L'ENFANT PLAZA STATION AND POSITIONED HIMSELF AGAINST A WALL BESIDE A TRASH BASKET. By most measures, he was nondescript: a youngish white man in jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt and a Washington Nationals baseball cap. From a small case, he removed a violin. Placing the open case at his feet, he shrewdly threw in a few dollars and pocket change as seed money, swiveled it to face pedestrian traffic, and began to play.
I came across this old Washington Post piece on world famous violinist Joshua Bell. It's been couple of years since I read this fascinating story for the first time, and this time it still made me think.
We buy expensive tickets to see Joshua Bell, but still very few stop by to listen him playing when he does it for free.
Maybe people just don't enjoy classical music, or they were in such a hurry as always. Maybe seeing a guy with jeans, T-shirt and baseball cap just doesn't fit your image of a real violin player. Besides, the setting was also all wrong.
So we just pass a great musical experience because the reality doesn't match our presumption of how this kind of music should be presented.
I think we are every now and then too obsessed with the way thinks look and how they are presented to us, especially when we are talking about new ideas.
If the whole package doesn't fit into our own presumption, we just easily discard it. We don't even spend a small moment really thinking about the idea, which might actually be the best ever. It just doesn't look like that!
We allow the first impression to deceive us, which is rather natural, but is it something we should fight against? Should we before discarding something really think if the idea is actually good, but it just needs improving?
