I have nothing to say but lots to show you – Walter Benjamin. I heard this quote this morning on In Our Time and it really struck me.

For me it says you don’t have to have the answers in order to bear witness.

There is so much that I see in the world that makes me smile. Things that when I see them make me despair.

I can’t necessarily find the exact narrative to rationalise these sensations. But that shouldn’t stop me from sharing them. Because when I do, I am creating the pieces from which a pattern can form.

In engineering circles there often needs to be a reason. But before we can reason we have to have thoughts and ideas, and these start off incomplete.

Ideas are the connection of existing information in novel ways. But if I only shared what I had fully figured out then it is hard for new ideas to emerge.

Proust describes the work of the artists as being to make their inner world visible to the outer world. When you stop and say I noticed this and it feels important, this is what you are doing.

Done thoughtfully it is a generous act. You are helping to build our shared Kalideascope – the collection of elements that through shaking and turning of talking to each other can help us form our our collective ideas.

Tell me what you see.