Truck rusting in your yard?

Make a flower garden out of it.

Some people just know how to delight. Take the owners of these trucks on Sauvie Island just outside of Portland, OR. These clever folks planted flowers in different flower boxes. Bravo! That’s thinking outside the old box, isn’t it?

Got a problem? There just may be more than one viable option when it comes to making decisions and solving your problem.

My husband is a great one for realizing there is no box to begin with. Right away his mind goes in 50 different directions and he comes up with an idea. However, he is quick to warn you that there is a lot of thinking left to do. Don’t get too fond of that solution, because he’ll come up with another one in a few minutes, hours, or days. His problem-solving is a long process. He builds on each idea until he is satisfied with the result before he takes action. He amazes me with his brilliance.

I tried to teach critical thinking to my students, and it was not the most exciting thing for them. Try as I might to make it fun, it was more of a slog than anything. Except when we had Socratic Circles to ask each other questions about a novel we were reading. Make that: Some of them were reading for their homework. Some of them were texting, watching reality shows on TV, talking on their cells, taking drugs, (oh, there’s a good topic for Socratic Circle), and some were just growing hair on their heads and not much else. But I digress.

I wish we, as citizens of the globe, would do more critical thinking about how to make this a better world. Some people do just that, but it doesn’t seem like it if you watch the news. I don’t have a TV, so now I don’t have to watch the news. I get my fill of internet news via my husband. I get to hear his rants about the craziness that goes on. Some of it is MIND BLOWING. I wouldn’t be able to make that stuff up. But don’t get me started.

Now all I’m thinking about in this moment is what to fix for dinner. Actually, I have to use some of the steps for critical and divergent thinking to do this. Civeche might be a good idea. I’ll think about this.

What are you thinking about?

Einstein’s desk photographed two days after his death.