Question 1

Embracing weirdness fosters originality and challenges the status quo.

Accepted Answer

Weirdness challenges conformity and sparks originality. To cultivate your inner weird, become hyperalert to your own curiosities. Keep a notebook to record your observations and emotions. Choose a pencil or pen that feels right, like your old tennis racket or paintbrush. Make art with simple tools - paper, colored pencils, modeling clay. Go for walks and take photos. Play imaginary games. Do things that gently knock you out of your ruts, like breaking a witching stick, making ink from pennies, or coloring your own Tarot deck. The point is not to finish exercises but to swerve your mind and enchant yourself. Through weirdness you can embrace the parts of you that make you different. This is risky but it's how you spark flair. Weirdness questions the status quo and opens new possibilities. It's political. Don't despair at being yourself. Distract yourself and be enchanted. This book gives you 99 ideas how to be weird. In the following you will discover 10 of them.

Question 2

Create an Overview Effect

Accepted Answer

When astronauts first view Earth from space, they often experience a profound shift in perspective called the "overview effect." This feeling of awe and interconnectedness with the universe inspired Apollo astronaut Edgar Mitchell to quit NASA and form an institute exploring human potential. Other Apollo astronauts had spiritual awakenings and devoted themselves to new pursuits after returning. You don't have to go to the moon to glimpse this cosmic consciousness. Simply observing nature up close, then looking up at the sky and imagining your cosmic connection, can reframe your worries as small and your heart as vast. A memento from your earthly study can remind you that you're only a perception shift away from syncing with the infinite. This "overview effect" arises when space travelers behold Earth's fragility and humanity's unity. Gazing at the ground, then the sky, highlights our cosmic belonging. Simple practices reconnect us to this web when life feels disconnected and anxious.

Question 3

Encourage Moments of Yūgen

Accepted Answer

Life can easily become routine, with our focus narrowed to survival and understanding. But there are special moments that open our perception to new possibilities. Alan Watts called these yūgen - mysterious sensations of profundity, like watching the sun set over a field of poppies. We cannot explain these moments rationally. They arise unpredictably, silencing our practical concerns and beckoning us to explore. Beyond each new horizon lies another and another, forever. To foster yūgen, Watts suggests setting aside time for a solitary, aimless walk. Recall the anticipation of childhood, when anything could happen. Notice thresholds - doors, gates, clouds - and imagine what lies beyond. Let your mind wander freely. Later, capture the essence of this experience in a sentence, drawing, or object. Store it somewhere special. When life feels stale, take it out and remember: there is always more. Yūgen reminds us life is open-ended, ever-unfolding mystery.

Question 4

Astonish Your Words

Accepted Answer

Words often fall short in capturing the full intensity of our inner experiences. When trying to express intense emotions like depression, anxiety, or love, the words we commonly use can seem bland or inadequate. Poets redefine words through vivid imagery to bring language closer to lived experience. For instance, Emily Dickinson described her depression as a "funeral" in her brain. Redefining the words we use to describe our moods can help us become more intimate with our inner states. By turning our mood into a concrete thing, we can examine it up close, keep it near, or set it aside. Through fresh imagery, we can liberate words from the lexicon and arrive at truer expressions. By doing this, we may gain new understanding of what we feel.

Question 5

Turn This Book into a Shovel

Accepted Answer

Things are often tired of being only one thing. We can liberate objects by using our creativity to transform them into something new. Start with small everyday items. Take a paperclip and bend it into different shapes like a letter, bracelet or worm. There's no such thing as 'paperclip-ness'. Objects are more like verbs than nouns. Their meaning isn't fixed. Practice turning one element into another form of energy. Consider this book. How many things could it become? Maybe a tray, spinning top, weapon, shovel, dollhouse, hat, plate or falling object. The point is to use your imagination to see beyond an object's usual purpose. This exercises creativity and turns hard facts into flexible fantasies. Science says transforming objects improves innovative thinking. And who doesn't want more of that? The magic is seeing past an item's single identity and turning it into something delightfully different.

Question 6

Go Sinister

Accepted Answer

Charles Sanders Peirce was a philosopher who believed being left-handed caused his troubles. He tried to strengthen his right hand to influence his brain. Modern science shows this doesn't work. But learning to write with our non-dominant hand still has value. It helps us see things from a new perspective. We become more open-minded when we try things in an opposite way. Simple exercises like writing your name with the other hand can make you more tolerant and less prone to oversimplification. Gradually writing more with your non-dominant hand develops an "alter ego" that provides a fresh viewpoint. Though we can't change our brains by hand exercises, purposefully doing things differently expands our thinking.

Question 7

Assemble a Shadow Box

Accepted Answer

Joseph Cornell found joy in creating art from everyday objects. He frequented antique stores and thrift shops in New York City, gathering an eclectic collection of items like marbles, shells, images of actresses, and passages from books. He carefully arranged these objects in wooden boxes, creating miniature theaters where striking juxtapositions animated the mundane. For example, one box featured a Victorian doll surrounded by painted twigs, representing a fairy tale world. Another contrasted a haughty Medici prince portrait with playful toys, suggesting the spiraling nature of time. The boxes became Cornell's escape from his cramped home life.

To create your own Cornell box, spend a week gathering random objects that spark your imagination. Choose seven favorites and decorate a shoebox, adding color or fabric as desired. Arrange the objects creatively inside the box, securing some with glue or tape. Display and observe how the box's meaning evolves over time, as you make new connections between the items. Make a seasonal box for each time of year in this artistic, meditative spirit.

Question 8

Arrange a Wunderkammer

Accepted Answer

Athanasius Kircher was a 17th century German Jesuit who was fascinated by many subjects, including languages, history, geology, medicine, inventions, and the Bible. He curated a famous Wunderkammer, or "cabinet of curiosities," displaying objects related to his diverse interests, like Egyptian artifacts, fossils, and odd inventions. Visitors could hear Kircher's commentary on the objects through a tube to his bedroom. While Kircher's collection exoticized non-Western cultures, artist Amalia Mesa-Bains created a more respectful New World Wunderkammer exhibiting meaningful objects from indigenous cultures. She organized them to represent concepts like memory, struggle, and wonder, healing feelings of loss and displacement. Creating your own Wunderkammer allows you to collect personally meaningful oddities. Your collection may reflect your inclinations, family history, or social group. Hunting for these curiosities makes you more observant of the world and connected to your heart.

Question 9

Design a Mappa Mundi

Accepted Answer

Ancient maps reveal the dreams of their makers and are confessions made of space. The 1154 Islamic map by al-Sharīf al-Idrīsī was based on interviews with travelers and showed a circular world with Arabia at the center. The European Hereford Mappa Mundi from 1300 expressed Christianity with Eden at the top and Jerusalem at the center. Both maps included mythical monsters, reflecting imagination. To understand yourself, make a mental map. Put your ideal state at the top and your best self at the center. Fill in spaces with symbols of your identity - defenses, anxieties, obstacles. Cluster positive symbols near the top. Color it and hang it to inspire self-reflection. Ancient maps expressed ideals; making your own map reveals self-knowledge.

Question 10

Forge a New Identity

Accepted Answer

Names have power. Famous people like Mary Anne Evans, Eric Blair, Samuel Clemens, Archibald Leach and Caryn Johnson changed their names to reshape their identities and further their careers. Recent research shows that a name can influence personality and appearance. The expectations tied to a name - that a Katherine will be successful or a Bob will have a round face - can lead people to unconsciously change their behavior and looks to match the name. Celebrities likely changed their names to escape constraints and play new roles more successfully. Contemplating a name change can provide relief from insults, insecurity and weariness with one's identity. Even just imagining being someone else named on a folded piece of paper in a wallet can provide a temporary escape before returning, with fresh perspective, to being your old self again. Though names have power, your identity is not wholly defined by the name you currently bear.

Question 11

Pursue Astral Pareidolia

Accepted Answer

Pareidolia is the perception of meaningful images in random patterns. It is wired in our brains to recognize faces for survival. But while seeing familiar forms is useful, it also makes the world seem monotonous, like a mirror of ourselves. To refresh our connection to the world, we can practice "astral pareidolia" - perceiving strange, uncanny forms in the random patterns of stars. By projecting unfamiliar shapes onto the night sky and drawing them, we can rediscover the mystery of the cosmos. This exercise challenges us to see beyond the familiar and expand our imagination. Practicing astral pareidolia renews our sense of creativity and wonder.

Question 12

Accepted Answer

Final Summary: "How to be Weird" by Eric G. Wilson is a unique and thoughtful guide on embracing one's individuality and peculiarity. It encourages readers to defy homogenization and conformity and valorizes the specific and the "other." The author, drawing on his own experiences and conversations with colleagues, presents exercises and suggestions that encourage non-conformist thinking and actions.
Each of these actions encourages divergence from the norm, stimulating individual creativity and a unique perspective on life, which is at the heart of Wilson's message.

How To Be Weird - Book Summary (2024)