Yesterday, I was walking in Villa Pamphilj in Rome. Since my early childhood, I have strolled across all the fields and hills of this park. I have explored all of its paths. I thought nothing could surprise me here, since I had befriended the park a long time ago playing epic scavenger hunts at my birthdays. I was wrong.
The afternoon was bright and I was walking mindlessly. When I'm past the midpoint of my walk, I am already home with my mind. At a certain point, a blue police car slowly passed by. It's odd, as cars don't usually haunt these places. I turned around. Otherwise, to this day, I probably would not have noticed it. When I cruise this walkway, I'm usually well wrapped in my thoughts. I don't navigate. I roam on auto-pilot. Habits rule over all my decisions.
When I first looked around, I felt skeptical. It was as if my mental map of the park suddenly broke. There was an opening in the woods. It was not the thin trail of an animal, nor the mistake of a gardener. The opening marked a road so wide a car could fit in it. Could it possibly be a new path? My map of the park certainly did not include it. I trusted my knowledge of the park to be accurate and up to date. I felt surprised. I had wondered many times about what was on the other side of the green thicket along that road. Now, a door had opened.
As I explored cautiously into the new route, the trees along the road seemed freshly cut. This felt quietly relieving. If I had not found any evidence the path was new, I probably would not have believed my eyes. I was feeling like at a turning point in a Murakami novel, when reality starts to shift and bend. I had crossed the Pillars of Hercules of my mental map. Ordinary thoughts were gone. My awareness was spreading and opening. Hic sunt leones. Beware, now everything is possible, the route seemed to imply. As I continued, my curiosity grew.
Where did path lead? Excitement and fear mingled.
They felt very similar. As the path continued downhill petty anxieties mounted. What if, the road suddenly finished and I had to climb back? This was likely another unfinished project of the local administration.
Was I even allowed to walk the path? I felt like a trespasser.
Nothing visibly new had been built in the park for a long time, so that the odds of a real new route were slim. What if, instead, it had been there all along? I was confused. The rest of the park was busy. Here, I was alone.
Why was there nobody else? What's worse, I reasoned, is that for a path to lead somewhere, it must reconnect with another road.
Although I had a vague sense of its orientation, I could not picture the other end of the path, neither exactly nor approximately. I felt twice as suspicious. When you think you know a place very well, you're subject to double bind. A plausible set of premises is not enough, if you know the conclusion of the argument is false. Einstein famously did not believe quantum mechanics, which entailed "spooky action at a distance," with entangled particles communicating faster than the speed of light.
As I was still trying to reconstruct the path backwards and untangle my mind, I felt slowly more at ease. The route seemed like it was built to be walked on after all. There was nothing wrong in pursuing it. This may sound silly, but until then, my brain had been busy tricking me into thinking I was under all sorts of imaginary threats.
What was the worst case scenario here? Trailblazers always face social risk. I
I noted that this risk felt so alive even as I was not around others. I wasn't thinking of career or market risk, but how disappointing would it have felt to be fooled by my own park?
As the path unwinded, I had to make choices. Alternative destinies opened up. At the first crossroad, I recall wondering: should I venture left and out, pivot and keep exploring towards centre of this maze, or check if the path leads where I first hoped it led? I needed a reality check. I chose the latter and continued.
Does innovation always occur at random? It seems all it takes is a subtle noticing factor to suddenly ignite and divert our focus (the police car, in our story). Alertness and a working hypothesis allow us to give meaning and reframe our understanding, even against strong priors odds. Then, it just takes courage. Much more than you would like to. Venturing into unfamiliar roads is never easy.
It's paradoxically worse, the closer we are from home. To a large degree, it's convexly hard. As the same imaginative mind is set to play against itself, projecting everything that could go wrong. Habit is the social tie that keeps us together, but a healthy equilibrium of courage and imagination compounds faster.
After a short while, I could recognise a soft downhill slope leading into familiar territory. It felt glorious, as new adventures awaited for another day.
What have you been discovering lately? Keep wandering,
David