Have you ever listened to a lecture or sermon and wondered how in the world the speaker knew just exactly what was going on in your life? The message seemed directed right at you. I wonder if others in the audience felt the same way, but for very different reasons. Thinking humans have a way of sorting messages into our current context and applying them to our personal issues. This sometimes leads to an apparent apathy about our situation when we try to tell someone about an experienced hardship and the listener turns it into their own story. The listener probably isn’t really uncaring about our situation, but simply views it through their own contextual lenses.

Once in a while, we go out for dinner and I am intent on NOT discussing business. Yet, it seems we can’t quite leave all those cattle at home and I just can’t help but notice the jewelry folks have on. No matter how we try, our lenses are colored by the context of our daily existence. For example, while driving through town the other day, I noticed a big sign in a store window. It read “Rock Stars Wanted.” I almost pulled right over assuming that they needed jewelry designers who work with “rocks”. A second look, however, straightened out my thinking. The new bar on the square wanted bands to play at happy hour. Hmm . . . I guess that isn’t me.

Recently, my daughter found a pattern for a toy ball that used different types of textured ribbons. My daughter thought it would be great to make for her 8 month old and I, of course, wondered how to convert those marvelous textures to metal work. (Shame on me!)

I believe that contextual thinking is good for creativity. Man has traditionally borrowed ideas from seemingly unrelated sources for problem solving. The entire body of work in Synectics (purposeful connection making) is based on this principle. We might still be riding on bumpy metal tires were it not for a man making a connection between his son’s situation of riding his bike with metal tires on bumpy cobblestone streets and the garden hose he was using. The literature indicates that the first rubber tires came from a garden hose wrapped around the metal tire rim of a bike. Putting things in our own context can make for improvement.

The point here is that contextual thinking can work for us. We do it all the time and find connections to use in problem solving and design work. Let’s just remember that some connection just DO NOT work. I wonder what that bar owner would have thought if I’d brought my designs in and applied for his Rock Star position.