eagles and belugas

People are very intelligent, but it's a pity we're not as free as the birds and the fish.
I had a very intriguing conversation with someone Friday night. He mentioned how constrained humans are. We live in a 3-dimension world but we are limited to roam in two dimensions.
We naturally cannot explore the full potential of our realm of existence. We are physically confined to this two dimensional world, able to only move forward, backward, left and right in straight lines. Oh, we can do loopy, circular movements too.
We should take a note from the eagles and belugas, escape the confines of a two-dimensional world and jump into the third. Realize the full potential of existence.
I believe this can apply to creative and critical thinking. Don't think in straight lines or confining yourself in only two dimensions when you can exercise your potential into loopy lines and three dimensions.

Let's talk loopy lines first.
When I have to incubate a new idea, I try a very fun exercise. Let's call it "tangent drawing". Start with an idea, think about it, develop the idea until near maturation. Then, suddenly, go off on a complete tangent. You can come up with a new idea, an opposing idea, a complementary idea. As long as you're not working on the same idea.
An interesting pattern starts to develop as you work on something like this.
The tangents will actually start converging - even if there are tangents that are opposite ideas.

More on escaping into new dimensions on the next post...