With those eyes you’ll never see anything
Or if I’m to quote accurately “with those eyes, my bonny lad, I’m afraid you’d never see it”.
Finding Neverland, without fail or doubt, is my favourite film. And if I had to pick the best line, that would be it.
The scene where it is said involves James Barrie, the writer of Peter Pan, and the young Peter Llewelyn Davies who acted as inspiration for the famous children’s story’s main character.
In this scene, Peter refuses to believe in Barrie’s ability to turn a dog into a bear. We know Barrie is talking about using his imagination, but this is something Peter has little time for.
Peter, disapprovingly states “why did you bring me over here for? This is absurd. It’s just a dog.”
Barrie replies “Just a dog? Just? Porthos dreams of being a bear! And you want to dash those dreams by saying he’s ‘just a dog’? What a horrible, candle-snuffing word. That’s like saying, ‘He can’t climb that mountain; he’s just a man.’ Or, ‘That’s not a diamond; it’s just a rock.’” Before turning back to the dog, Barrie gives the boy an appraising look and mutters, “Just.”
“Fine then. Turn him into a bear, if you can.” Peter retorts.
An unfazed Barry:
“With those eyes, my bonny lad, I’m afraid you’d never see it.”
Scepticism can be a good thing.
It shows we aren’t simply jumping on the band wagon, that we are considering something from another point of view, or that we are prepared to be challenging. In a professional environment it can sometimes be a useful stance to take.
However, scepticism can also be a not so good thing.
When it goes from being a way to consider something to a default setting it often results in stubbornness or an inability to see anything from a different perspective.
In other words, it becomes incredibly limiting.
Throughout my career I’ve been in a lot of meetings where the shadow of scepticism has killed so many opportunities. More often than not they’ve been when discussing creative ideas.
That’s not to say the ideas that were abandoned were necessarily God’s gift to the brand objective. However, the focus has always seemed to be so much more heavily weighted toward ‘what if it goes wrong’ and rarely ‘what if it goes right?’
That’s oversimplifying it.
The solution doesn’t lie in simply thinking ‘what if everything is amazing and pigs will fly?’ However what I tend to see happen is a collective resistance to try and see the potential in an idea. It’s always a matter of looking for all the ways it couldn’t work as opposed to looking for all the ways it could.
An idea is rarely right straight away. It needs to be pushed around, broken down, built back up, and really stress tested before it’s in a place to be judged.
But for an idea to even get close to that stage it needs to get across that initial hurdle of people seeing its potential. And unfortunately, this seems to be the time that everyone has their scepto-guards up. Or if I’m being true to the source of inspiration for this post, their eyes that won’t see anything.
I’ve used an example of this being a workplace here because that’s where I see it as a very condensed example. But it’s really not limited to work at all. This default scepticism — a stubbornness to stick to our guns and not see things differently—exists everywhere. When it becomes our go to position it can shadow the way we see the world and mean we sometimes dismiss opportunities that come our way.
By default we stick to the path of predictability instead of flirting with ‘what if it does work? what if it is good? what if it does take off?’
Opportunities need to be exhausted before they’re dismissed. If they’re not right it’s vital to think objectively and know when to let them go. But before all this can happen they need to be seen and given a chance.
Scepticism can be a good thing, but in a healthy measure. Too much and we’re in tunnel vision, too little and we’ll say yes to anything. It’s an important balance to strike.
We, and I’m saying this to myself as much as the collective, both professionally and personally need to master that balance. To truly exercise potential and opportunities we need to be receptive to new ideas, willing to think about things differently, and ultimately be open to seeing.
