Emerging needs (4) – Eyes to see?

Emerging needs (4) – Eyes to see?
Torrey Orton
March 17, 2010


I went looking for something the other day and found it, though I didn't know what I was looking for. I set off with a need in mind – to find a birthday present for Jane. It was already late, so some effective action was required. My plan was to look around town between one meeting and another. Not much of a plan in project management or business plan terms. However, it worked within 5 minutes of actually formally (in my mind) starting to look. The cue was a sign on a door next to the first meeting place.


It said "spiral " or something similar in a slightly attention grabbing script - more so because it was not visually garrulous and effusive. I remembered having seen it a dozen plus times and wondered what it was, while having an underlying impression it was a cover for a newsagency. You know… one of those multipurpose ones which thinks it's a gift shop and office supplies centre, with tool shop and copyfast production airs.


Having a couple of minutes before the schedule meeting, I ambled over to a window for a quick squiz, and immediately was blocked from an interior scan by a couple of women wrapping parcels in snappy paper – gift shop type! One beckoned and I shuffled away in my usual don't notice me noticing you way. As a result another window in a door shuffled into a view so the squiz was on again. More evidence of gift shopness and nil of news agent with allied services.


Enough evidence to hazard a look in the displays. So I shuffled in the door and in two more minutes what I was looking for materialised at my eye level. The beckoner of a minute earlier materialised herself with a well-timed "Can I help you?" I pointed at the beckoning prospective gift which I was fast reconstituting as an earring box. She noted she'd bought one for her husband's cufflinks before I got my thoughts out and she reached with a key to unlock the case. The rest is visual marketing history. She opened the box; it had four equal sized velvet sections in it; I said yes; she asked 'wrapped"? I yessed that, too and carded up for the final steps in the sales minuet.


Only left to finish the search: the recognition of the found thing as the gift it is intended to be in the eyes of the gifted one. And as it was so recognised, fulfilling for her a need she did not know she had exactly until the container for it was seen. She noted that she was always misplacing earrings, usually one of them, but had not formulated the fact of misplacing them into a need for a solution. The unwrapping disclosed more than it contained.


Jane reminded me that Asian sages have long known something like this, which left me both uplifted and downtrodden at once. Up for being in grand company and down for knowing that I would never belong to that company, neither of which is my fault; just my fate.