What I Learned in Pre-School

The article was titled, “The Idea of Creativity, the Creativity Behind an Idea.” Of course it intrigued me.

The importance of creativity and creative thinking has risen to the top of the MBA curriculum and now finds itself in all discussions about business, success, and the need to stave off the decline of America.

Evidently you can be a creativity expert, and Frank Härén is positioned as that by putting on seminars, writing a book, and founding the Interesting Organization.  He and his work were the focus of the article. It’s worth a read and can be found here.

The article has various aspects, but in it he talks about creativity and also about the idea. He even has a formula for the idea –- idea=p(k+i). P is people, K is knowledge, and I is information. I didn’t find this too creative.

But I did find something interesting under the subheading “Where did our creativity go?”

Creativity does not come overnight. Showing how difficult it was for an individual to think beyond the common, Härén asked his audience to use their imaginations to come up with a list of ten impossible things that they wish to have. When he compared the answers to his own list of ten things, most of the responses were, as he predicted, similar – the 'the ability to be invisible', 'the ability to fly', etc – perhaps like "model answers" to the question. “There are one billion things we could have used our imagination to say and we don’t even have ten unique answers!”

Pre-schoolers, on the other hand, answered differently. They wanted to be able to touch love, to lift a bus without breaking a finger, to see with their fingers, etc. This, to Härén, is proof that we are born to think creatively, but we lose our creativity along the way as we conform to norms, expectations and institutions. “We’re animals of habits, gaps and comfort zones. When we do things differently, someone comes and tells us that we’re doing it wrong and we stop doing it,” he said.

I’ve had this discussion with many people over the years and believe that we do or can lose some confidence in our creative abilities as we grow. I found this paragraph to aptly fit something I experienced recently.

I was surfing around the Writer’s Digest website and found myself on a page that suggested writing prompts. A quick scan didn’t yield anything until the following caught my eye:

You wake up one day with an unusual super power that seems pretty worthless – until you are caught in a situation that requires that specific ‘talent.’

I was at attention, but let’s just say that I wasn’t thinking like a pre-schooler. I tried. Honest. Here’s how my thought process began…

Hmmm. Strength is usually one of those super skills. The ability to leap over tall buildings in a single bound. To become invisible. To see through concrete or steel or whatever. To grow into a giant when irritated. To turn green.

None of that is really appealing, and some of that is actually quite useful. So a worthless power, well that takes some tossing around.

How about holding your nose and turning your body into a powerful magnet? Rather useless unless you’re in a room full of thugs with guns.

Where did that come from?

Making a sound like… a whistle to attract an animal or to scare an animal…ears that glow…the ability to click your tongue – I read all of the Ladies Detective Agency books and it stuck with me…

I abandoned the exercise after staring out of the window for a good while, coming up blank. Had I been one of those pre-schoolers, I would have come up with all kinds of creative ideas. Like the ability to taste something and know its origin – worthless unless you’re trying to determine if you’ve been sold the wrong grapes, like Gallo. Or the ability to look at a handwritten note and see the face of the person wrote it – worthless unless you’re reading a ransom note from the person(s) who stole the Friesian cow. Or how about if you could think of an event that happened in the past and close your eyes to see the quantum bumps that it created, sort of like a film, perhaps like Sliding Doors. Worthless but useful in so many ways.

We have read that everything we know we learned in kindergarten, and while it’s put forth that life and environment affect our confidence in our abilities, I’d say the best super power to have is the one that lets us see that we’ve been given infinite gifts and abilities and that we possess and use them every day.

Worthless?

April 1st: The Update

While I've been slow on the blog, it's hard to believe that I haven't yet included any of the April 1st Project for the year. So here's a catch up.

Quotes discovered:

The mere smell of cooking can evoke a whole civilization.
  - Fernand Braudel

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.
  - George Bernard Shaw

Self trust is the first secret of success.
  - Ralph Waldo Emerson

Man is the only being who knows he's alone.
  - Octavio Paz

Mere precedent is a dangerous source of authority.
  - Andrew Jackson

Cynicism is an unpleasant way of saying the truth.
  - Lillian Hellman

A hundred times every day I remind myself that my inner and outer life are based on the labors of other men, living and dead, and that I must exert myself in order to give in the same measure as I have received and am still receiving.
  - Albert Einstein

The basic formula for all sin is: frustrated or neglected love.
  - Franz Werfel, Between Heaven and Earth

We are all tied together in a single garment of destiny...An inescapable network of mutuality...I can never be what I ought to be until you are allowed to be what you ought to be.
  - Martin Luther King Jr.

So if you think your life is complete confusion because your neighbor's got it made, just remember that it's a grand illusion and deep inside we're all the same.
  - Styx, The Grand Illusion

A bird does not sing because it has an answer. It sings because it has a song.
  - Chinese Proverb

In all things of nature there is something of the marvelous.
  - Aristotle

I believe in God, only I spell it Nature.
  - Frank Lloyd Wright

Get away from the crowd when you can. Keep yourself to yourself, if only for a few hours daily.
  - Arthur Brisbane

And now for some photos:

Kuala Lumpur

When I was young, I lived for a time in Kuala Lumpur. Our house was in a rather new neighborhood that wasn’t fully developed. Several empty lots separated our house from our neighbors on one side. On the other, a local couple lived quietly until the early evening hours when a disagreement between partners would ensue, and the wife would chase the husband around with a butcher knife.

It was an exciting place. Exotic for obvious reasons, tropical and moist.

Behind our home was an unknown area, the perfect curiosity for children. My memory fails the particulars, but I do recall a wet and rainy day – not unusual – in which we explored what lied amongst the vegetation. We discovered a giant spider – big to all of us, scary as well. My brother stepped in quick sand, and we feared his drowning into a pool of light brown gunk.

On rainy days, the children of the neighborhood would meet in those empty lots, pick sides, and begin a mud ball fight. As in any ‘battle,’ we had strategies, defectors, and pain. The sneaky ones, myself included, would sometimes put rocks inside of the mud balls and throw them as hard as we could. The rain came down, the mud caked our clothes and hair, and we only stopped the fighting when the voices of our amahs coaxed us out of the downpour.

We sat with our parents on the front porch, our dogs slinking about to find a cool spot to rest. We watched the color of the sky change, and we felt the air get still.

I loved Malaysia.

We sucked sugar cane cut from the backyard. Laughed when my mother stepped on a thorn and thought it was the black king cobra lurking in our yard. And I cried and screamed when the monkey, a pet of neighbors down the block, would pull my hair.

I long to go back and see the place where I lived. To find the street where I went over the handlebars and ‘came this close to hitting a parked Mercedes,’ according to my father. To visit the local market. To see if the school I attended still stands.

My puzzle of childhood memory has lost many pieces. It is the ones I hold, trying to determine where their shape fits, that surface unexpectedly and I turn them in my hand.

When I sit here to write and think about what to share, I go back to the past to see if something of it can be told about the present. There is no concrete connection to today, but I know that those experiences are part of the present moment.

I’m drawn back in time when I’m looking for possibilities and trying to forge into new and unknown territory. I guess I’m trying to conjure that wide-eyed girl who went forth into the thicket and came out with new stories to tell.

Five for the 5th

Here are five things for the 5th:

1.
I stumbled upon an Octavio Paz quote that rings in my head. It's something that I truly came to realize only a few years ago, and the reality of it still makes me pause. He said, "Solitude is the profoundest fact of the human condition. Man is the only being who knows he's alone."

2.
An excerpt from an Economist article a while back:
"Our future history will be more determined by our position on the Pacific facing China than by our position on the Atlantic facing Europe," said the American president as he contemplated the extraordinary commercial opportunities that were opening up in Asia.
Guess who said this? The article continues...
"More than a hundred years after Theodore Roosevelt made this prediction, American leaders are again looking across the Pacific to determine their own country's future, and that of the rest of the world. Rather later than Roosevelt expected, China has become an inescapable part of it."

3.
David Lebovitz
Living the sweet life in Paris.
This is a great blog.
http://www.davidlebovitz.com/

4.
Here's the BBC News profile on Aung San Suu Kyi.
She deserved the Noble Peace Prize. She also deserves freedom.
http://bit.ly/6LMHQS

5.
Found this on TED. I am a fan of Pilobolus and really enjoyed this. It is symbiosis...

The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency

I am reading the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith. I came late to the discovery of these books, which has turned out to my advantage in one sense. Over the past two weeks, I have been reading these books in succession, having retrieved all of them from the library and stacked them neatly on the desk.

I am just now beginning the third to the last book, and I can already feel that I’m going to miss Mma Ramotswe, Mma Makutsi, and Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni. Not to mention the apprentices. The books take place in Botswana – Gaborone to be exact, with many references to Lobatse, the Kalahari, and places over the border. I know a slight bit about Botswana due to meeting two men in a computer training class years ago who were from that African nation. They shared the same pride that is evident in these books, and it was enough to cause me to look further at Botswana, this landlocked nation that is dry and hot.

There is a real sense of pride about Botswana in the books, of the people, of the land, of the old morality, and particularly of the leadership of the country – Sir Seretse Khama to be exact, the man who led the country after it became a free nation and whose legacy continues to guide the nation and its people. And there’s a great deal about cattle.

As with most good books, I find myself scribbling notes or underlying things. As these books are from the library, I’ve been jotting away. The books are filled with many truths. Here’s one: “A life without stories would be no life at all.”

These truths are observations. Observations about people, things, the world around us. The main character, Mma Ramotswe, the founder of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, is a keen observer. Having no experience in detection, other than having read her trusty manual titled The Principles of Private Detection, she brings her ability to distill the truths that she sees in people and their behavior to the art of solving problems. Problems more than crimes. Ones to which we can all relate or understand in some fashion.

These are easy, breezy books to read – about 200 pages each – and they are a real delight. I find myself laughing a great deal, but I also have had to stop a tear or two at times when something has touched me just so. I have vivid images of the characters. I hear their voices. And I can see the Kalahari.

One of the joys of reading is that it can transport you to another place. These books certainly have done that. But it’s more than place. These books have transported me to Botswana, to understand the people and their traditions and their land. And the most exciting thing is that when I resurface here on my land, half a world away, the lessons and truths that I have found in these books are relevant to the place where my two feet are planted.

Ending the Year with April 1st

On the last day of 2009, here’s a recap of what’s been happening in the April 1^st Project over the past few weeks:

I’ve come across a lot of book lists and recommendations.

The Bolter by Frances Osborne

Dreaming in Hindi by Katherine Russell Rich

On November 30^th, the WSJ headline indicated “Obama Sets Plan for Afghanistan.”

On December 10^th, Obama accepted the Nobel Peace Prize.

Oprah’s list of 10 books to watch for 2010:

Star: How Warren Beatty Seduced America

Unfinished Desires

The Happiness Project

Day Out of Days

Talking About Detective Fiction

Nanny Returns

U is for Undertow

Stones Into Schools

Footnotes in Gaza

Cleaving: A Story of Marriage, Meat, and Obsession

Oprah and I don’t always share the same taste for books, but she’s got some good ones here. I have added The Happiness Project to my library list and also believe that I’ll venture into the last three on the list.

The Guardian in the UK created a list of ‘the decade’s best unread novels,’ which I found interesting and repeat here:

The Spare Room by Helen Garner

The Secrets of the Chess Machine

Don Quixote – Translated by John Rutherford

Mutiny by Lindsey Collen

Barefoot Soldier

War Reporting for Cowards

Born Yesterday by Gordon Burn

Black Juice by Margo Lanagan

Journal by Helene Berr

Boy A by Jonathan Trigell

The Three of Us

The Girl Who Stopped Swimming

I discovered www.filmsite.org as a great resource for film quotes and other movie-abilia.

“The excellence of a gift lies in its appropriateness rather than its value.” – Charles Dudley Warner

Had a delicious feast with friends on Christmas. Our menu was:

Porcini Mushroom Soup

Beet Salad with Dijon-Honey Dressing

Baked Snapper with Potatoes, Oregano, and White Wine

Roasted Carrots

Brussels Sprouts Sauteed in Butter

Braised Fennel with Lemon

Berry Clafouti

“In order that people may be happy in their work, these three things are needed: They must be fit for it. They must not do too much of it. And they must have a sense of success in it.” – John Ruskin

Discovered www.vook.com and www.myebook.com.  And some great stationery sites: Kate’s Paperie, Jenni Bick Bookbinding, and Vickerey.

I was disturbed this morning by an article in the WSJ about Iran titled “Regime Wages a Quiet War on ‘Star Students’ of Iran” – An excerpt: “In most places, being a star means ranking top of the class, but in Iran it means your name appears on a list of students considered a threat by the intelligence ministry. It also means a partial or complete ban from education.”

I find all the news out of Iran disturbing, but the continued clashes, arrests and violence against people seeking truth, freedom, and democracy is outrageous. They are brave in a way that most of us will never have to be.

On a lighter note, Dan Pink – of whom I’m a fan – has a new book titled “Drive.” In it, he sets out to outline what it is that motivates us. According to Pink (from an interview in the WSJ), he says there are three things that motivate us:
autonomy, the desire to direct our own lives
mastery, the desire to continually improve at something that matters
purpose, the desire to do things in service of something larger than ourselves

Whatever motivates you, I hope you find an abundance of it in 2010. I hope that your dreams come true, your goals are realized, and that you remain in good health. Happy New Year.

Reflect and Renew

As the year comes to a close, it’s time to reflect and to renew.

I find that the best way to look back is to do so with gratitude, being mindful of and thankful for all of the goodness that I have enjoyed. I am blessed with an abundance of deep and lasting friendships, and it is through those that many of my joys have been experienced. I am blessed that my professional life has yielded success in many ways, but the most valuable have been the relationships and bonds that have transformed a business connection into a personal friendship. I give thanks for all the love and support that I receive, for the heart that has been connected to mine for so many years, and for the ability to give and share joy, a warm smile, and a good laugh.

Simple things are great when viewed through the lense of gladness. The turtles laying their eggs earlier in the year, the eagles over the pond, the frog symphony outside the back of the house. The fun cooking class with neighbors, time perusing Food & Wine, Gourmet, and Bon Appetit, and dirtying my hands, the kitchen, and a lot of plates. I’m thankful for time to read (presently am enjoying the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency series by Alexander McCall Smith), time to write, good music (love that iPod), and moments of silence. This year, I particularly enjoyed the Houston Grand Opera’s Cavalleria Rusticana and  Rigoletto, the Alley’s Eurydice and Gruesome Playground Injuries, the Menil’s exihibit of Joaquin Torres-Garcia (not too late to see this great work, ends January 3), and countless other visual arts and performances. I have enjoyed my involvement with the River Oaks Chamber Orchestra, enjoy my friendship with Alecia, and continue to be absolutely thrilled when I see them perform. I enjoyed my weeks of Looking at Art with a girlfriend as it gave us time to have a bite and catch up each week for a period – a true gift in the midst of busy lives and coordinated schedules. And there is so much more; these are but a sampling of my blessings.

In November, we kept a basket shaped as a cornucopia on the kitchen counter, a Post-It pad and a pen alongside. From the first until Thanksgiving, we became more attentive to those things for which we were/are grateful, and we wrote them down as they came to us, folded our notes, and deposited them into the basket. On Thanksgiving Day, we unfolded and read each one. From the big ideas to the small things, our gratitude overflowed.

I watched a podcast some months back that featured Oprah interviewing Sarah Ban Breathnach, the author of Simple Abundance, a book that I have not read or picked up – yet. I enjoyed the dialogue between these two women, and the focus was on gratitude. Sarah urged the keeping of a gratitude journal and the practice of writing in it daily. I did not adopt the journal then, but I have now. And I begin 2010 with a lovely journal that will spill over with kindness, goodwill, modest pleasures, and some extravagances. Life is so rich. My life is so very rich. For that I am tremendously grateful.

And it is because of this that I also take time now to renew – renew the commitments that I’ve made to myself, renew my aspirations, renew the strategy that I have for my life and my work. I make renewed commitments instead of resolutions because the word “resolution” seems to have finality to it. A beginning and an end, a resolved issue, a goal attained. Life is an ongoing process, a journey that will take you down a number of paths, each contributing to who you are and how you see the world. I renew, make adjustments as I feel are needed, and continue into the new year with boldness and an open and glad heart.

Wishing you daily moments of joy and the time to reflect. And I hope that 2010 renews your spirit and fills your heart. Happy New Year!