Title: Caine’s Arcade. A cardboard arcade made by a 9-year old boy.
Context: We have all just lost any excuse we once had to not innovate our asses off.
Synopsis: Remember when you were 9 and you went to your Dad’s work and spent all summer designing and constructing your very own fully functioning arcade? Yeah. Me neither. I think I was home watching cartoons at the time. But Caine did just this. And he did it without help. Without outside motivation. Without anything other than a few cardboard boxes and his own relentless drive and boundless ingenuity. We often talk about the meaning of words like “innovation” and “creativity” as if they are baffling concepts attainable only through hard and secretive labor. Then we go back to our desks and work the same way we adults always have. Boringly. We treat the magic of passion as a buzzword and have forgotten what it was that drove us in our youth to embrace skinned knees, grass stains and dirty hands as byproducts of our effortless imagination. I look at Caine – and other children like him – with as much envy as awe. What can we do to preserve and grow his youthful passion? More importantly, what should we avoid doing so as to not stifle and constrict such raw genius? And finally, how do we manage to recapture it in ourselves?
Best Bit: Caine. Quite simply this kid is the business.
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