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“Hi Rowan, can you tell me something whimsical to do today?” That’s what my sister said when she called me this morning. It sounded like a small question, but it landed in my mind like static electricity, ordinary words charged with something bigger. Because no one really asks for whimsy anymore. We ask for schedules, clarity, direction. But not whimsy. Not curiosity. Not something unmeasurable.
I told her, “Go climb a tree and blow bubbles from the top.” “Rake a pile of leaves and throw yourself into it.” “Buy a soda, sit in a garden, and listen to your favorite song.” Things that sound pointless, but aren’t. They’re portals. They bend time a little. They make the air feel alive again.
After I hung up, I kept thinking about it. What even is whimsy? Why does something so simple feel so essential? Maybe because whimsy is what happens when the mind slips off its leash, when the part of us trained to optimize finally gets tired and lets the rest of us breathe.
As a creative person, I think about this a lot. My whole career — photography, storytelling, and journalism literally depends on my ability to see what’s invisible to most people. To notice. To connect unrelated dots and call it a new idea. But the brain can’t invent inside a cage. Creativity isn’t summoned by willpower; it’s a side effect of wonder. And wonder doesn’t live in deadlines, it lives in trees and bubbles and useless afternoons.
There’s science behind this. The default mode network, the part of our brain that activates when we daydream or let our thoughts drift, is also where new connections form. When we stop trying to be productive, our neurons start to wander, to collide in strange combinations. That’s how creativity actually happens: in the absence of control.
When I think about women, I think of that same defiance. To be whimsical, to wander mentally or physically, has always been coded as irresponsible. But sometimes I think it’s the opposite. Maybe it’s the purest form of intelligence, to think beyond what’s expected of you. Whimsy is the oxygen of imagination, and imagination is what keeps civilization expanding.
But lately I’ve wondered: will that expansion ever stop? Will there be a moment when human creativity hits its limit? When every idea has already been written, painted, photographed, or theorized? It sounds impossible, but then again, look at sports. We’ve watched world records plateau, athletes inching closer and closer to the physical limits of the human body. Oxygen, muscle, gravity, they have boundaries. So what about imagination? Does consciousness have its own version of oxygen?
There’s a terrifying and beautiful thought in that: that maybe we’ll someday exhaust the frontier of human novelty. But maybe that’s why whimsy matters more than ever. Because whimsy doesn’t follow maps. It doesn’t care about what’s been done before. It’s the only thing that can’t be industrialized. When I do something whimsical, when I wander, play, waste time, I’m not just resting. I’m rewiring my brain. I’m tricking my mind back into evolution.
Maybe that’s the secret: that our species’ creativity doesn’t grow through progress, but through pause. The same way a forest needs stillness to regenerate, the mind needs aimless joy to stay fertile. If there ever comes a day when we reach the limit of ideas, it won’t be because there’s nothing left to think, it’ll be because we stopped giving ourselves the space to think differently.
So when my sister asked for something whimsical, maybe what she really asked for was a way back to the infinite, the part of us that still believes there’s always one more idea hiding in the folds of the universe. The part that refuses to accept that we’ve seen it all.
And maybe that’s what I’m chasing too. Every time I take a photo, or write, or build a story, I’m really testing the boundaries of human thought. I’m asking if there’s still a new way to see the world. And the answer, I think, begins in those small, strange moments, blowing bubbles from a tree, drinking soda in a garden, raking leaves for no reason. The kind of acts that don’t make sense until you realize they’re keeping you from becoming static.
Whimsy, I’ve learned, is not the opposite of intelligence. It’s the origin of it. It’s the glitch in the system that keeps the system alive. It’s the proof that the human mind hasn’t reached its ceiling yet.
So maybe the most whimsical thing we can do is to keep believing there’s still something new under the sun, and then go out and find it.