Too little
Protecting the familiar
Nobody in the family makes it that way.
A familiar method is treated as a reason to dismiss an untried possibility.
Open-Mindedness
The family recipe has met a spoonful of evidence.
Readiness to give unfamiliar reasons or perspectives a fair hearing.
Open-Mindedness gives an unfamiliar interpretation or possibility a fair hearing. In making, an accidental mark or another person’s suggestion can disclose a direction your plan did not include. Try to understand what that direction could offer before accepting or rejecting it. The virtue is receptiveness with judgment, not a duty to follow every suggestion.
Open-Mindedness gives possibilities that the original plan could not supply
You are making a familiar bean salad for friends. A companion suggests a little chopped mint. You almost answer that the family version has managed perfectly well without it. Instead, you put a spoonful in a small bowl and try the suggestion there. The recipe card stays open beside the large bowl, looking rather more official than a salad requires. You taste the trial and find a freshness worth considering. Now you can choose with more than loyalty to yesterday’s ingredients.
Finding the balance in Open-Mindedness
An illustrative everyday situation
Taste a small variation of a familiar dish before deciding whether the suggestion belongs in the meal.
A fitting response
Giving it a fair trial
Let us taste a small portion with the mint.
The suggestion becomes something you can understand and judge.
Pursued too far
Changing for novelty
A new ingredient must make it more creative.
Surprise replaces attention to the meal and the people eating it.
A small trial can give an unfamiliar idea a fair hearing.
When the situation changes
You enjoy the variation but find that it overwhelms the other dishes. Keep the familiar version for this meal and save the mint idea for another occasion. Understanding a possibility can lead to a reasoned refusal.
What Open-Mindedness makes possible
An inherited recipe can remain loved while acquiring a new variation. A collaborator’s idea can become a real option, and comparison can help you understand why an older choice works. Open-Mindedness gives a promising direction time to show what it offers before habit settles the matter.
Open-Mindedness in ordinary life
Another ending
Draft an alternative ending suggested by a reader and compare what each version leaves the audience to consider.
An accidental mark
A blot in an illustration suggests a tree where you planned a moon. Try that reading in a study before deciding which direction serves the story.
Nearby virtues, different work
Curiosity
Curiosity goes looking for an unknown connection. Open-Mindedness receives a possibility that challenges the current one.
Humility
Humility admits a limit in your understanding. Open-Mindedness can welcome an alternative even when the first plan was perfectly competent.
Open-Mindedness and its counterfeits
Counterfeit: Novelty as judgment
Assuming the unexpected choice must be better is a counterfeit of Open-Mindedness. A new direction still needs to serve something.
Counterfeit: Polite dismissal
Praising a suggestion without considering it can counterfeit Open-Mindedness. A genuine hearing identifies what the suggestion might change.
How to cultivate Open-Mindedness
Restate the alternative in a form its proposer would recognize.
Try a manageable version when that would clarify its value.
Choose with reasons, keeping worthwhile unused possibilities for another time.
Try it today
Considering an idea does not commit you to using it. In shared work, respect agreed limits; when cooking for others, use ingredients suited to the people eating.
Take a work in progress and test one plausible alternative you would normally dismiss. Use a small study, rehearsal or trial portion to understand its effect. Compare it with the work’s purpose, then choose the direction you have reason to develop.
In a diplomatic conversation
Try a promising direction you did not anticipate.
Questions worth returning to
Which familiar choice have I stopped examining?
What has the trial revealed that my first reaction missed?
Keep the practice proportionate
Considering an idea does not commit you to using it. In shared work, respect agreed limits; when cooking for others, use ingredients suited to the people eating.
About these practices · DisclaimerQuotations and further reading
Seven selections to return to through the week. Follow a source link to read the surrounding passage.
Everything but prejudice should find a voice through him;
Stevenson asks the writer to keep a supple, sympathetic mind. The wide claim is a challenge to examine a perspective fairly, not a promise that every proposed direction will suit a particular work.
With a variety of models thus before him, he will avoid that narrowness and poverty of conception which attends a bigoted admiration of a single master, and will cease to follow any favourite where he ceases to excel.
Reynolds recommends studying several masters. Although his teaching is hierarchical, this passage encourages looking beyond a single familiar model.
They will see the other side of propositions and the other side of virtues.
Stevenson is describing readers whose convictions differ from one’s own. Giving another view a fair hearing can reveal a possibility that a settled interpretation concealed.
The first service which originality has to render them, is that of opening their eyes:
Mill explains why an unfamiliar idea’s value may not be evident before it is tried. A small experiment gives a new possibility a fair chance to show what it can do.
Highly esteem the Old, but take also a warm interest in the New. Be not prejudiced against names unknown to you.
Schumann pairs respect for established music with a fair hearing for unfamiliar composers. A loved tradition can remain valued while an untried possibility is considered.
It is no longer tradition if it is servilely copied, without change, the token of life.
Morris argues that a living pattern tradition changes through understanding. A new direction can continue an influence thoughtfully instead of merely repeating its surface.
It is the same in painting, where touches shall sometimes slip from the hand of the painter, so surpassing both his conception and his art, as to beget his own admiration and astonishment.
Montaigne considers the role of chance in art. A blot or unexpected mark can be examined as a possibility before it is automatically corrected.
Continue exploring
Take these ideas into everyday life
Read freely, follow the fourteen-virtue program, or adapt this collection in My Virtues. Begin with a piece you want to make.