Why you should embrace wonky thoughts and wonky people

I always find beauty in things that are odd and imperfect - they are much more interesting .   Marc Jacobs

 

Don't think to straight, embrace some wonky thoughts and wonky people, it's no fun walking down the straight and narrow.  Life is a collaboration of individuals of different shapes and sizes with different thoughts and opinions, embrace the differences.

Beauty is skin deep but wonky vegetables are ugly to the bone. I watched a new snippet on how supermarkets are having wonky veg boxes, full of overgrown, funny looking vegetables which you can buy at a discount.

The highlight of the story was the news reporter asking a woman if she wasinsulted by a particularly curly carrot.

It was a daft question, but the answer was glorious

“No, I rather like it, it has character”

Wabi Sabi

I was reading the book ReWork: Change the Way You Work Forever and itmentioned a phrase Wabi-sabi

Wabi-sabi is described as 

Wabi-sabi is the quintessential Japanese aesthetic. It is a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete. It is a beautyof things modest and humble. It is a beauty of things unconventional...

Wabi-sabi is the art of imperfection, its important in world which moves towards conformity, a world of corporate companies and high streets filled with chain stores.  

Wonky Appearance

We live in a world which places a premium on looks and presentation.  The mediais filled with pictures, interviews and opinions of attractive people, why listen to the ramblings of people based on their appearance?

It turns out appearance is not only important in people but in our are fruit and veg, people don't want to buy funny shaped vegetables.

Thousands of tons of vegetables are thrown away because they are the wrong shape, supermarkets have stringent acceptable dimensions for vegetables.

We should champion the different shaped vegetables not throwing them away, we should buy them if they are cheaper and bigger.  Let us not forget wonky vegetables are funny

Be Prepared for Wonky

Wonkiness is not limited to vegetables, you will meet lots of wonky people in your life. People can have wonky thinking, behavior, appearance, methods, processes and wonky dress sense.

If we were all the the same, life would be boring but yet we are naturally suspicious of people who are different.  We should embrace the differences in each other and collaborate to incorporate the different views and ideas.

The difference in thinking of individuals is an invaluable tool, which bares the most fruit when working in groups, this allows the different views to merge and colloborate.  I use the term wonkiness of thought because other people have different opinions and methods of thinking, this can seem alien but ask questions and learn from a different perspective.

Wonkiness means you need to work differently with people to get the most from their wonky thinking.

Embrace Wonky

When you work at the same job or do the same process long enough you become a slick machine, to the extent it becomes a habit. Habits are the brains way of beingable to do tasks on autopilot e.g. when you do something enough time the braincan do it without concentrating on the task.

A great example is driving. Have you ever driven to work and forgot how you gotthere? It’s because your brain did it on habit autopilot.

It’s not habit autopilot that s the biggest threat it’s your system 2 logical brain accepting defaults. To progress you need to evolve processes, find better ways andthink about how to become more effective.

When new people join your department or team they bring with them wonkythinking, they question why we do things in certain ways. New team memberswant to understand the goal of processes and then see if there is a better way.

Wonky thinkers ask why?

Enjoy Wonkiness

We should embrace the wonky vegetable in everyone. Everybody has a wonky quality to them, which often manifests itself in fascinating hobby.

I love hearing about the unusual hobbies and stories of colleagues

A friends 2 year old son loved watching Youtube videos of clocks, particularlygrandfather clocks.
I used to collect erasers, which my nephews and nieces loved and some survived which my children play with!

My nephew used to collect can's of Lynx deoderant, he had over 50 cans

A school teacher did Kendo and brought in his sword

I will leave you with the quote from the great Roald Dahl

A person who has good thoughts cannot ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nose and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but if you have good thoughts they will shine out of your face like sunbeams and you will always look lovely.  ― 

picture from here