Slippery ideas

We can feel ideas. When we feel a particularly good one, “hmm” or “a-ha” slips uncontrollably from our lips. Often we hear an idea and we can’t quite hold onto it. It might be a bit of wisdom, or a story with a profound moral. We desperately want to remember it. But it keeps slipping away, like a word we can’t quite define. We do well to rein these ideas in: the slipperiness arises from feeling that an idea is true before knowing that it is.