The Pleasure of Eureka

01 Mar, 2025

I have recently been struggling on a particular project, almost banging my head against a physical wall as much as the proverbial one. It has been difficult to work on this project because it makes sense in my head but what comes out of me is nonsense or convoluted abstractions. Both of these are signs that something might be bullshit all the way to its core. This insight startled me since I really wanted to try and communicate this notion clearly and honestly. It was merely coming out of me all crooked. The next step when you realize that the project which sounded great in your head is trash is to put it where it belongs. But I wasn’t ready to do that with this project. Not only because I wanted it to work and knew that it was just a matter of explaining it correctly, but also because I feel like there are other people who depend on me to complete it. I owe it to them to not ruin a good idea.

Being in these kinds of places are tricky because it induces a kind of doubt which is hard to resolve. How can you really distinguish a good idea from a bad one? Ideas are often heavily dependent not only on the subjective tastes of those hearing it, but also on the execution of it. The idea of reading Plato or Aristotle is very different from actually doing it. Having a cool idea for a video game is very different from nuts and bolts gameplay and mechanics. We know hearing or seeing something cool and being disappointed by execution. So if your execution is bad, then your idea might still be salvageable. But you never know. And you might step into the “what is true?”-dimension very quickly after and only be sucked out of this place when you show it to a friend or a critic. The fresh pair of eyes can be useful. But they can also confuse the vision. So even there you have to be careful.

But then you might come across something randomly or think of a phrase. Something that shakes the soda can loose from the machine. That’s when it happens: EUREKA! I have found it. Eureka-moments are seldom like those on television or movies. They can be. Mostly they are not the Newtonian apple bonking him on the head (which I know isn’t what happened), but the boring result of just continually shaking the tree and the apple eventually falling. This is what happened to me. I have been working tirelessly on trying to organize what I was even trying to say when it all fell into place. Puzzle-pieces which seemed like they weren’t meant to be there suddenly lay before me and oh what a magnificent feeling it is indeed. It is the leavening of the body from the weight of the mind - the equilibrium of flow being regained. Work becomes not so much a thing to dread but a thing that starts to make sense again. For why do I really bang my head against the wall when I am stuck? What purpose does it serve?

The purpose is easy, I know there is something in return. And how long I bang your head is the proportion of pain I am willing to sacrifice for what might be on the other side of the wall. But it is always dangerous to hit your head too much and for too long, even if it is for the greater good of some larger purpose. You can wear yourself out in more ways than one.

For me the issue was that I wasn’t digging deep enough. I was thinking broad, but not deep ¹. As soon as I started to realize that there was an influence to my influence I could start pulling at the fabric. It was an important step of what eventually lead to my breakthrough. I had been circling it but never realized it was a hole all along. It is crazy to feel that your idea wasn’t dumb and in turn that you are not dumb for having it. I was being blind to what was right in front of my nose.

When I had stumbled on the piece I needed I could re-evaluate the project with my own fresh new eyes. I could walk back and take a look at new perspectives to fill it with life again. When a book or an article finds the correct line of references, when a song is lifted by its bass, or when a piece of drama finds its correct actor – it feels good. It feels invigorating. That is the pleasure of work. It isn’t the end product per se (although products come with their material benefits), it is the coming together of disparate pieces into coherence. It is the pleasure of making incoherent things coherent; of making the connections and pulling a clean lily out of an oil spill. If you felt you could pull of such magic tricks – why would you ever stop?

.dash

Comments

I am sorry this is absract, but I don’t want to divulge to much of what the project is. Pieces of it might come to this blog eventually but I am afraid to promise anything.↩