New
Ideas
A new idea is a stick of
dynamite. It can get you killed, especially in small towns. Little-town
memories of my youth include this oft-recited axiom: “A new idea and a cold drink of
water, taken together, can kill you.”
Ideas swirl in the Georgia
red-clay dust devils that transplant the topsoil. They shimmer in the heat
monkeys that rise from asphalt roads that turn liquid in the stifling summer
meltdowns. It’s preached on every corner and in every church. Not so much
in words, but in the winks, the nods, the habits and thought patterns inbred into
generation after incestuous generation.
Ideas are dangerous. Why?
Because new ideas step on toes. They change things and tend to upset the status
quo, the perceived, predictable and traditional ways of doing things. If anyone
is foolish enough to attempt to upset a small-town status quo or the existing
power structure, fresh rope suddenly appears. The hapless innovator receives
swift recompense administered by local vigilantes.
A hot air balloon
rises from a field in France. It’s observed by Alexander Graham Bell and a
friend. It floats over some trees, coming to rest in a field tended by peasants
with pitchforks. Immediately it’s violently assaulted, collapsing lifelessly in
the loess.
The friend asks, “Dr. Bell, now what good came from
that hot air balloon experiment?”
Dr. Bell replies, “What
good is any new-born baby?”
My mother was always trying
new ideas. Like tricking me to eat liver. She pleaded in her best logic, “But
son, it’s good for you”. She
soon learned that logic is not the best motivator of stupid kids.
Her last attempt to trick
me into eating that foul meat went sideways. Its malodorous stench hung in the
humid air for blocks in our neighborhood. People fled their homes, gasping for
breath. Those horrendous episodes finally broke her will. She abandoned all
further ideas and efforts of trickery.
My grandmother had better
luck with squash. She baked it in lemon skins, and it was terrific, to which I
said, “Jewel (her
name, and she was one!), this is the best baked lemon I
ever ate.” Like I said, kids may be stupid, but good food
overcomes logic every time!
One Sunday, with my mother
in tow, I revisited the little Methodist Church of my youth after some 20
year’s absence. We sat in the second row left, near the altar. After the
service, two elderly ladies rushed up to me, saying, “We barely recognized you…you were
not in your usual place.”
I remember saying, “Uh, where is my usual place?”
“Why, your
regular place was always in the back right, not the
front left.” There
you have it…the status quo, alive and well. I’d now become a revolutionary
iconoclast!
Maybe it would have been
good to have told them that during my absence I had swallowed a new idea that
seems to be working. Repentance is one of those ‘new ideas,’ you know. It
always has an Audience. It sometimes takes hard knocks to change one’s mind.
Now I sit up front, lower left, as close to the fire as I’m willing to get.
Thomas Edison experimented
with over 1,000 gas combinations to find one that worked in the electric light
bulb. Before success arrived, he was asked, “Dr. Edison, have you
failed?”
He replied, “No,
I have succeeded in finding 1,000 combinations that won’t work.”
You’re reading this now because his new idea continues to explode in the face
of the darkness of status quo.
Historical events often
don’t create new paradigms as much as they reveal new eras, pregnant with
possibilities. It begs question of what might happen if we swallow some new
ideas. History is waiting for our actions, not our words.
The choice is ever before
us: nurture the new, or rot in the ruins of a crumbling status quo. We can’t do
both. Do you have a new idea? Light the fuse…change history!
Bud Hearn
October 17, 2014
No comments:
Post a Comment