The most
important things in our lives don’t follow a script

“It’s not LEGO.” I couldn’t help but think that as I watched my young nephews eagerly assemble their new LEGO kits over the Christmas break. I understand the pull, the result is dazzling, Star Wars spaceships, architectural marvels, and dinosaurs are recognizable and much cooler than whatever I made in my LEGO days. And the way pieces interlock is still fundamentally the same. But I insist, it’s not really LEGO.

LEGO as I know it is an act of pure imagination and an engineering challenge. When it comes to LEGO, less is more, add instructions and you’ve just subtracted everything worth having from the experience.

The results for the future for a generation we are raising that needs a playbook, may be worse. My
thesis, as you guessed, centers upon the importance of imagination. And it’s easy for you to imagine all the arguments I could make in favor of the blank slate we had to wrestle with when we played with this iconic toy as a kid. So I won’t. It’s the implication for the quality of their lives that I think matters more.

The insight came to me a few days after watching my nephews build their LEGO ‘creation.’ I was
assembling a small piece of IKEA furniture for my daughter. I resentfully followed the instructions. I
loathed the experience, but opted for the instruction sheet, just to get it over with. In the interest of
time, I followed the nameless and basically faceless guy in the flimsy instruction sheet. Every fiber of my being wanted to trash the instructions and simply look at the pieces and screws and figure it out.

It wasn’t just being told what to do, and being deprived of the occasion of putting the puzzle pieces together, it was who I was at that moment. I wasn’t really producing anything, I was an obedient consumer. The finished product wasn’t just cheap, it was in no way my creation. The LEGO is doing the same thing, churning out consumers rather than producers. The whole world is leaning in this direction. Social media pretends to make us feel like we create our pages and our content, but anyone who thinks about it for a second realizes that it is not a free product, it is free because we are the product; our data, our likes and dislikes, is sold to the highest bidder. Social media is consumed and they have the consumer by the balls. We respectfully respond to every ping and ding and crave for more ‘likes.’

To be fair, my loathing of instructions is not entirely a virtue, it’s generally a fault. My kids (who also did many of the same LEGO kits as older kids, and this new generation has a leg-up on me – as does most people, in this respect). In the kitchen, if you want the meal to turn out well, recipes help. It also put an end to my career in medical research. It’s great to have insights into physiology, but without the patience to follow detailed instructions, the successfully executed experiments that are required to make a discovery, you don’t get very far. Rules and instructions that make sense make sense to follow.

But there is more to life than rules, and many of the implied rules don’t make for good lives. The most important things in our lives don’t follow a script: meeting significant others, best friends, finding interests and opportunities. This is what I fear for the generation growing-up with smart phones and paqint-by-the-numbers LEGO: They will be consumers above all and not producers. Even if they are blessed with a killer imagination, will they have the reflex to figure out how to turn the idea into something real – to fly without an instruction manual and be curious? All the joy in life comes from building things: Products, knowledge, art, and especially, real (non-virtual) relationships.

Health lies in action, and so it graces youth. To be busy is the secret of grace, and half the secret of content. Let us ask the gods not for possessions, but for things to do; happiness is in making things rather than in consuming them. Will Durant

If their whole lives are following the templates will it really be their life? Will there be any difference between them and the Homer Simpson-like guy on IKEA’s instruction sheets? So, on January 2nd, thanks to the IKEA guy, an important resolution for 2024 came to mind: Produce more, consume less. Above all, go off script, improvise.

K. Wilkins is the author of:

Stoic Virtues Journal: Your Guide to Becoming the Person You Aspire to Be

Rules for Living Journal: Life Advice Based On the Words and Wisdom of Jordan B. Peterson