Sparks

Never fall in love with your design, or so goes the maxim anyway.

The reasons seem clear, obvious even. In those initial moments you can get carried away with the poetry of creation, you can become trapped in the glamour of a beautiful lie, swept along in a current of fantasy and there's potential for heartbreak.

These are all good reasons and true. And not. These initial sparks, this falling in love, isn't a fiction, it is merely an incomplete truth and only dangerous and unsustainable when it is ungoverned and withheld from the world. To be complete, this spark needs to be brought out into the light and shadows of you peers, your partners and the desire and needs of your client. This completion will make it something different, maybe radically so, but without that first spark it could never be strong enough to thrive. It could never be what it's meant to be.

Embrace those flashes of insight from a rooftop garden conversation or those long and quiet realizations from watching the tide from the beach. Without these, without that initial madness, without that passion and without that risk, what is the point of this thing of ours? Without these, what are we left with?

What else is there?

Fall in love, make sparks, but respect what you're making and those you're making it with, offer both your full attention, but allow it into the light and shadows, listen and trust that it will endure and be right.

Sparks are worth fighting for and waiting for what they can become is time well spent.