Every time my daughter picks up a new toy to play with, I have an urge to show her the “right way” to do it.
She was sitting on the carpet playing with her new radio, twisting and turning the knobs, putting it in her mouth, turning it around upside down, trying to figure out how to get it to play music. I was about to reach out and tell her, “Here let me show you how to get it to play music.” But then I paused.
Was she really trying to figure out how to get it to play music or was that me projecting the “right outcome” onto her? For her, the joy was not in pressing the right knob to play music. The joy was in the process of figuring out the new toy in her hand, figuring out what the knobs are, and figuring out how the music flow changes when the volume is turned up or down.
In my rush to show her the right way to do something, I was depriving her of this joy. It was a good reminder to me that beauty lies not in the result, but in the process.
And who knows, maybe through her discovery process, she might figure out other ways of using the radio that I wouldn’t have known about. This might be why beginners or outsiders sometimes have an advantage in new industries. They see things from a fresh lens. They don’t know the “right way” to do things. They enjoy learning about the process.
Sometimes this discovery process yields valuable results. Sometimes it doesn’t. But it almost always fills one with joy.
I’m Aastha, and thanks for reading my world of words. I write about education, human creativity, and any other words I bob my head to. I also write a longevity and health newsletter called Live Longer World.