I feel like the easiest way to begin is by noticing someone’s faux pa. “We don’t do it here” means “we here” have collectively agreed on something else, but one can assume a role to develop some attitude to the agreed-upon thing. Be a lord and view it as yours to govern; be a word and build it through a multitude of connections; be a crook and parasitize on it; be a cook and enrich it; be a trader and “just deal with it” etc.
The trick is to remember what role it was, why you chose it, and what this says about your environment.
An example.
When my kid was in his second year of primary school (that’s for 7-8 y.o. here in Ukraine), they played a game: kids were running in circles around chairs, and when they heard a whistle they had to sit down. But they were one chair short, and each time one kid and one chair were sent away. After three rounds my son started to get the general idea, and when they started running he went to the pile of discarded chairs and got himself one because whatever. (They disqualified him, and I stood there grinning like an idiot because heck yeah.)
But I also thought about how I would explain to him the game as a game, quite separate from everything else.
I feel like the easiest way to begin is by noticing someone’s faux pa. “We don’t do it here” means “we here” have collectively agreed on something else, but one can assume a role to develop some attitude to the agreed-upon thing. Be a lord and view it as yours to govern; be a word and build it through a multitude of connections; be a crook and parasitize on it; be a cook and enrich it; be a trader and “just deal with it” etc.
The trick is to remember what role it was, why you chose it, and what this says about your environment.
An example. When my kid was in his second year of primary school (that’s for 7-8 y.o. here in Ukraine), they played a game: kids were running in circles around chairs, and when they heard a whistle they had to sit down. But they were one chair short, and each time one kid and one chair were sent away. After three rounds my son started to get the general idea, and when they started running he went to the pile of discarded chairs and got himself one because whatever. (They disqualified him, and I stood there grinning like an idiot because heck yeah.)
But I also thought about how I would explain to him the game as a game, quite separate from everything else.
Seems like thinking outside the box is only allowed at school when you are explicitly told to. :D
...but not always, unfortunately.