Agility

From a very young age I have identified with the value of agility, both physical and mental. I wanted to be Tarzan, Zagor - men of the forest. The Puma (not the Eel). Not very strong (I wasn’t) but rather svelte and efficient as a practitioner of Judo (I was) or Jujitsu.

Re-reading Calvino’s Lezioni Americane (Six Memos…)¹, I note he associates agility (nimbleness) to both lightness and rapidity. He talks about writing, which is also a way to think.

Mental agility is the ability to roam between different and seemingly distant concepts, but which it is possible to connect using reasoning and Imagination. Even between different languages and cultures. Distinct areas of knowledge, the versatility of the polymath who leaps ‘di palo in frasca’ (from pole to branch, like Tarzan and Zagor) with confidence and self-mastery. Ignoring barriers and arbitrary boundaries, guided only by curiosity and the joy of exploration.

The concept of Agility acquires new meaning in the age of software and the Internet → Agile is a core concept of Design Thinking: Learn, Test, Iterate. It is almost a philosophy, a general approach to life. Don’t think of things as static and linear: an idea, a product, a project that stays hidden while in the development stage until it is complete. Rather bring it into the world early, ‘launch before you are ready’. It is a liberating idea, which recognises the cyclical shape of evolution. Of course it is risky, but it is better to fail early (and often), when the investment in time and resources is limited.

Arguably, human babies are born ‘before they are ready’. They cannot survive on their own. As a species we had to learn the hard way the strategies to keep them (us) alive. With much less at stake, but similarly, I put these ideas out there while I think and work on them, instead of waiting for them to be perfectly formed, combed, presented in a publishing product.

I value agility of thought, in writing, and as a method.