Once in a while, I choose to explore a different route when I’m driving to work. I have a decent mental map of the area, and I have a vague idea of the direction in which I am travelling, so I know I’m not going to stray too far from my intended destination. I have made some fascinating discoveries about my city and seen the quirky ways in which it has grown, and had unexpected glimpses into charming old buildings that find themselves surrounded by fancy new apartment complexes. Over time, I have gained an understanding of the winding lanes — an understanding that sometimes serves me much better than Google maps!
Much as we celebrate and encourage focus and concentration, I cannot help but be charmed by its opposite — the tendency to wander. But this is not a completely aimless wandering (although to be honest, there’s a certain charm in that too). It is, like in my example above, about straying from a known path with the intention to finally get to a planned destination. What this takes is what I like to call a “purposeful straying”, breaking free from a structure while being mindful of where you are going, and what it might have to do with your overall objective. While one part of the mind is travelling through those winding alleys of the imagination, the other is watching it, making note of how what you see could relate to other things.
I’ve also found that it is during such periods of mental wandering that I make connections that prove useful to my area of work and study, or stumble upon insights into problems that I have been struggling with. When we are too immersed in the details of a problem, we may fail to see patterns that only become visible when we pull back and look at it in a larger context, or from a different vantage point. And occasionally, we come to such a vantage point when we accidentally move away, or turn to another side. The important thing, however, is to remain conscious of how we are moving and what it might have to do with what we seek to learn.
It is possible to cultivate this ability to wander in a conscious way, to potter around in different knowledge realms, to go into seemingly unrelated areas, and come back with ideas that energise your own project and give you new ways to look at your core field of study. We’re all familiar with the story of how August Kekulé came up with the structure of benzene and how Archimedes connected his fabled bathtub experience with what became a fundamental law of hydrophysics. To begin with, it means we develop an interest in and engage with subjects and activities outside the sharp boundaries of our chosen field, and foster an intellectual curiosity that goes beyond what we “have to do” for some narrow goal such as marks and grades. I’ve often seen research scholars and post graduate students confine themselves to reading only what they need to read for a particular course or for a paper they are working on, or attending only those optional lectures and seminars that are within their area. There might be a dozen interesting events going on across campus, but if they do not fall within the limits of their syllabus, they are ignored, or worse, labelled as a waste of time. It is possible to learn to enjoy ideas for their own sake, without the need to do something with them, or to squeeze some specific value out of each one. But oddly enough, it is during such periods of seemingly unproductive intellectual wandering that the best ideas strike.
This is also why having interests that are completely unrelated to one’s work area helps develop lateral thinking. If your day-to-day work involves numbers, then engage in a hobby that deals with words or images. If you spend all day creating pictures, then spend a little time working on a Sudoku puzzle or a crossword. If you are an engineer, go listen to a lecture by a novelist. And so on. You never know what you might learn and how it might help you in your own work. The key is to stay open to possible connections between fields of interest and activity.
As my colleague Joya Chakraborty, who teaches at Tezpur University, recently noted, “Students are always looking for a prescribed, efficient way to reach a specific answer… but one way of responding to any question, to explore any topic, is to raise further questions.” In other words, we are so focused on staying on an imagined path that is so strictly defined that we miss the often beautiful and instructive scenery along the way — and more importantly, the discoveries that might happen when we take an unplanned turn.
The author teaches at the University of Hyderabad and edits Teacher Plus. Email: usha.bpgll@gmail.com
