After the announcement that renowned anime director, Hayao Miyazaki, was laying down his pencil and stepping away from the phantasmagorical for good, I decided to indulge myself in some of his work once more.
Upon these travels I came across a film that has stirred my inner child out of it’s stupor and sent it running to the woods for adventures.
I found My Neighbour Totoro.
My Neighbour Totoro centres around sisters Mei and Satsuki who have just moved into their new home in the countryside and find that living peacefully in the woods by their house is the spirit Totoro, a generally docile large rabbit type creature who can only be seen when he wants to be.
So what can a story about two little girls and a giant rabbit like spirit creature offer a business like ours?
At first glance, not a whole lot.
No-one is discussing client dynamics or the art of flat design.
Not once do you hear someone question the choice of a payment gateway and there’s not a smartphone in sight.
But in a world where every answer is at the end of a fingertip, and where the other side of the world is only a click away, we have settled into a false state of omniscience and omnipotence.
We are the information age, yet we’ve stopped asking questions.
We can conference call with Beijing, yet we don’t speak to our neighbours.
We have the ability to band the world together for a higher purpose, yet we choose to spend a great deal of our time You-Tubing cats.
So when we take time to look a little deeper into Mei’s story, we identify the power of a curious nature, when it cannot be quelled.
We seem to be running away from qualities that are now deemed ‘childlike’, as though it’s an insult.
Curiosity seems synonymous with ignorance, as if all of us should simply know, without question, without interest, but intrinsic knowledge and understanding.
Whilst that may work for ‘fire - hot’, understanding a Magento extension by looking at it isn’t quite as likely. We are inquisitive puzzle solvers. We want to know how the watch works and how to make a better one. We’re not about to become complacent if the answers aren’t staring us in the face.
From making a difference to taking responsibility, this film encompasses so many of Folk’s leading values, but on the subject of curiosity, I took one message away with me, which I maintain I’ll be upholding...
Take risks. #BeCurious. Don’t stop asking questions.
You never know what you might discover.
- Beca