A talent that I have always had is the ability to look at situations from a different angle and come up with creative solutions. To me, these always seem obvious; to others, they seem obscure and unexpected. This is second nature to me and sometimes a little distracting. Sometimes I need to see a clear path without constantly trying to take off on divergent side trails. So talent has some drawbacks. However, I have often pondered what causes me to think this way. Perhaps I am just born that way, it is in my DNA, or is there something that I am doing that is different that causes me to think this way? I think the answer is all the above, but today, I thought of one thing that I have done since I was a child that was always considered strange by other people.
I will go back to my elementary school days, in the 1st and 2nd grades. I spent a lot of time as a young child clinging to my parents because, for some reason, I had a heightened sense of my vulnerability. I knew that I was at risk. If my parents disappeared, then there was no way that I was going to feed myself or survive. I am not sure when this thought came into my head, but it was there early on. As a consequence, I spend a considerable amount of time thinking to myself about how things worked and why they worked so that if I had to, I could survive on my own. So when recess would come around, I would go hide somewhere and process what I had been observing and thinking. I would act out little games or invent scenarios that I would have to react to. I found myself repeating things I said frequently to check their accuracy. I am sure I was weird to the other kids, and they often told me so.
Occasionally, I would get dragged out of my reverie and get forced to play whatever childhood game was going on during our recess or lunch breaks. One particular week, a girl named Julie created what she called her “Army.” She organized her fellow students into groups and had a leadership structure. In retrospect, Julie was a smart cookie. A girl in 3rd grade already showed an aptitude for organizing people, issuing orders, and receiving field reports. I instantly went into my contrarian thinking mode and started providing a few kids around me grounds for opposition to “Julie’s Army.” Soon enough, I had a small group hanging out in a different area of the playground, and we had inadvertently created an enemy on which Julie could focus her ire. This became the playground game for our entire school year and also spilled over into our neighborhood. Julie, the highly structured thinker at a young age, and I, the highly unstructured chaotic thinker, were diametrically opposed. We had yet to learn what was going on here and how this developed, but as I got older, I found this intriguing.
What was the fuel that got me to behave like this in 2nd grade and then thereafter for the rest of my life? There are many things, but one thing that stands out is that I have always provided myself with time to be creative. I will often take a path, out on my own, and spend considerable time allowing myself to just meander around on a topic. I have always tried to be structured, like Julie. However, I have never been successful. I find myself thriving the most when I am heading down the diverse path, stumbling around on the road least traveled. When I do come back, come up for air, and join the real world, I am full of ideas and concepts, just waiting to be tested. This is when I come running smack into reality, and that is where the creative idea and the structured plan come crashing together.
I have sympathy for Julie types. They are organized, disciplined, and on top of everything. They prepare diligently and think through all possible scenarios. Then they run smack into me, coming fresh out of a new idea storm, and I am forcing their well-rehearsed plan off into unchartered waters. I do see this happening, and I have my regrets about it, but just as I was in 2nd grade, I cannot help myself. The creative energy is just unstoppable, and I have long since given up on trying to contain it. So what I do, and have always done, is take breaks. Walk away, literally, and allow my mind to float around for a while. This process allows me to bounce around in an unstructured manner until something starts to formulate. I will chase that for a while, and when it starts to fizzle, I will bounce on to the next idea. I do this when I am not paying attention to deadlines, expectations, or requirements. This is why I was a straight-C student in high school who could go toe-to-toe with any teacher on any given topic and frequently would. They would give me a C out of mercy, knowing I was an intelligent kid but hopelessly unfocused.
Creativity is fueled by time away, time unstructured, and without constraint. Sometimes, I feel really down, discouraged, and despondent. I have noticed that this occurs almost always when I have not given enough time for my spirit to roam free. Trap the soul behind a monitor for too long, and it becomes listless and heavy. Creativity is definitely fueled by free time, there is no doubt. Those times as a child that I spent ‘bored,’ roaming around the fields around the house were time spent thinking. Do we spend enough time in open thought, I wonder? Are we so pressured to get things done and get to the next thing that we forget to allow ourselves the freedom to wander? If you want to be creative, stop first and contemplate how much space you are giving your mind. Unchain your mind to wander free, and there you will discover the creative soul that we all have.
