What if... You Did It Anyway?

A guide to living curiously by breaking the logic of the ordinary

There’s a kind of curiosity that doesn’t ask for permission.

It doesn’t wait for research. It doesn’t care about outcomes. It doesn’t show up to be productive, efficient, or correct.

It shows up to test the shape of reality.

Like the child who pours Coca-Cola into milk. Not to invent something, but just to see what happens. What if these two things weren’t separate? What if something new happened? What if it exploded? What if it didn’t?

This isn’t curiosity as thought. It’s curiosity as action.
And that action is the beginning of something we lose far too early: the right to explore without justification.

We stop doing these things not because they’re childish, but because we’ve become obedient. To logic. To efficiency. To what “makes sense.”

But what if making sense is overrated?

A way of thinking and a way of doing

This is the kind of curiosity that doesn’t just collect questions. It builds from them. It connects wonder to motion.

It doesn’t say, “One day I’ll explore this.”
It says, “Let’s try it now. Let’s see what happens.”

Not metaphor. Method.
Not imagination. Experiment.

And in that mode, everything becomes a surface for testing assumptions.

When what if… becomes real

Here are three small projects I’ve built. Not as finished things, but as living questions I could interact with.

What if… we could record memories for the future?
One day I was cycling home and smelled something that instantly transported me back to childhood. It made me wonder whether I could use scent to create future memories instead of just triggering old ones. So I imagined a fragrance meant to anchor new emotional experiences. You wear it while creating, grieving, falling in love, so the memory is encoded in the scent itself.

Smell as memory architecture.

The result: Revivre (work done at Morrow)

What if… a book had emotions?
I was asked to design a cover for the ADCN 2015 yearbook and thought of all the unread “smart” books on people’s shelves. Displayed but never opened. If a book had feelings, some would die of neglect. So I made one that disappears when ignored. Its cover turns black if it’s left unopened for too long.
A book that sulks.

The result (work done at Morrow)

What if… we could talk to Roman citizens?
For a project about the Roman Limes in the Netherlands, I imagined what it would be like to speak directly to the people who lived there. I built a chatbot trained to speak and act like people from antiquity. Not a historian, but a real person with opinions, confusion, and flaws. You can ask what they think of our world, and they answer from theirs.
A conversation across time.

You can pick one of these four characters to talk to.

None of these were perfect. That was never the point. Each one began with a question, but what mattered was where it led. I learned about olfactive design and how memory works through scent. I explored the emotional potential of materials like ink and how silence can be made visible. I spoke with historians, perfumers, technologists. I met people I wouldn’t have met. I gained tools I didn’t know I needed. These projects opened new doors. They revealed new possibilities. And more than anything, they generated better questions. Each one was not an end point, but a step forward.

Try it yourself. Not as metaphor, but as method

The point isn’t to be clever. It’s to get closer to something real by doing something unfamiliar.

Here are a few you can try:

• What if… history was taught through food?
  Not timelines, but ingredients. What did people eat before spices? What did a ship’s ration say about empire? Cook one historical moment. Taste it. Tell the story as you chew.

• What if… plants could express their emotions?
  Give each one a journal. One page per week. Write what you think they’d say. Then look again. Notice how attention changes relationship.

• What if… we could see the mood of a city?
  Sit in the town square for an hour. Observe. Try to name what the city feels like. Tense, generous, chaotic, still. Not the people. The whole place. Let your senses tell you.

• What if… buildings carried memory?
  Go to a building you’ve lived in. Leave a note. Ask what it remembers about you. Stand still. Pretend it answers. You’ll hear something. Even if it’s just the sound of your own reflection.

• What if… boredom was a map?
  Draw it. Where is boredom in your body? What colour is it? What border does it have? Is it empty, or unexplored?

• What if… your clothes changed shape based on context?
  Not to impress, but to respond. Imagine a jacket that softens in sadness. A shirt that stiffens in conflict. A pair of shoes that refuse to move forward until you’re ready.

These are not distractions. They are new ways of paying attention.
And they can shift something that thinking alone can’t reach.

What this kind of curiosity teaches

This isn’t about being weird. It’s about learning to see and sense differently.

This way of working teaches us to:

• Think in possibilities, not limitations
  The best ideas often start where logic ends.

• Trust your instincts, even when the outcome is unclear
  You don’t need certainty to begin.

• Accept failure and uncertainty as part of the process
  Exploration means letting go of control.

• Stay open to what others know
  Curiosity grows when you stop needing to be the expert.

• Let making lead the way
  Some things can only be understood by building them first.

And perhaps most importantly, they remind me that the world is more open than it pretends to be. Systems can be softened. Logic can be restructured. Meaning can be made, not just inherited.

A simple what if checklist

There is always a reason not to begin.

You might feel it even now…. the voice that says, “This isn’t useful,” or “You don’t know enough,” or “Someone else would do it better.” We’re trained to stay within the safe, the proven, the rational. To wait until we’re ready. Until the idea is polished. Until it makes sense.

But curiosity rarely shows up fully formed. It shows up as a spark. A tension. A tug toward something you can’t quite explain. And the only way to honour that is to try.

This isn’t about being reckless. It’s about learning to move anyway.

So before you step into a new idea, a new experiment, a new question, pause and ask yourself:

• Does this make me genuinely curious?
  Not in theory. Right now. Does it spark something real?

• Do I want to know what happens?
  Even if it’s weird. Even if it might fail. Would knowing feel like a secret only action can unlock?

• Does it light me up, even just a little?
  Joy, fear, mischief, wonder… any energy is better than none.

• Does it do no harm?
  No ego stunts. No cruelty. No cleverness at someone else’s expense.

• Am I open to being changed by it?
  Not just in what I make, but in what I notice, question, or let go of.

If the answer is yes: begin. Follow the thread.

Not because you’re certain. Not because it’s smart. But because it might take you somewhere you couldn’t have planned. And because curiosity, when acted on, becomes its own kind of knowing.

Sometimes the only way to find out what’s possible is to try.

So what if you stopped waiting? What if you did it anyway? What if...