The Element of Creativity and Its Hope for New Beginnings In Our Lives

What gives me hope about our personal problems and challenges, our social problems and challenges, our global problems and challenges?

The fact this very moment, people may be having brainwaves and insights which can provide us with answers - new ideas, new products, new customs and laws, new ways of being and living, which will enable us to break free. 

Whatever the status quo, remember there are 7 billion people out there with thoughts running through their heads and the potential to change it. Anything can happen. Anything can change. It has happened before.

Things get re-imagined, re-created, re-shaped, re-worked. They can and do change.

Therein lies hope.

Even an eleven year old can change the world.

Some human ideas will stick, some won’t.

Some ideas will be practical.

Some whimsical.

Just as you couldn’t have predicted that Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest would become such a big part of your life 4 or 5 years ago, right at this moment, there are ideas getting ready to touch your life you don’t know anything about yet.

That’s the fascinating thing about life.

Whatever page of life you are on - let’s say Page 32…..

……there are authors and co-authors getting ready to write the other 68-78 pages with you.

These include besides Lady Luck, all the technological, political and social changes that will mark your future life.

Of course you can choose to let the cards fall where they may, or be an active participant in the reinvention.

By thinking about things you are currently doing and asking yourself - can any of this be done differently? Should any of this be done differently? 

And how could they be done differently?

By asking yourself these questions, you may come up with new variations on a theme….or a way to combine completely different ideas.

When guest poster Ajay decided to write a series of posts on Bangalore, he used the device of time travel to make the posts part narrative, part history, part city guide book.  You can see how superbly this turned out here, here and here.

When Rob Bresny decided to accept a job writing daily horoscopes for a city newspaper, he thought about how he could invigorate and elevate the genre.  The result: his cool, clever literary Free Will Astrology column. Here’s his personal account of how it came about.

Once you have liberated yourself to reinvent, nothing is off limits. See how reinventing the iffy horoscope genre liberated Rob Bresny to get whimsical and create a brand new calendar of holidays. 

George Saunders, whose work Semplica Girls was first mentioned first in The Element of Discovery and Its Hope for Oddness, brings us a fresh way of writing.

Company reinventions are just as fascinating. Imagine how much harder it might be for a company to change; how much legal, financial and bureaucratic red tape might be involved.

Yet 3M has done it.  Again and Again.

And so has IBM.  Who would have imagined they would get out of manufacturing computers altogether and still thrive?

How can you reinvent your life?

What are the best examples of reinvention that come to your mind?

Remember, your life is not lateral.

Your imagination and inspiration can explode in many different directions.

When you allow your imagination to freely cross boundaries between different fields and ideas, you can come up with something truly original and wonderful

Such as a pirate supplies shop that’s also a tutoring center.

Your imagination can be a workhorse or a wild horse.

When it is a wild horse - experiences can lodge themselves powerfully in your brain, creating irrational fears, irrational desires, irrational suspicions and irrational beliefs. Fears the world will end. Fears of destruction and loss. Fears which cripple you from taking action.

When your imagination is a work-horse, you have the power to change anything and everything in your life.

So tame and train the wild horse that is your imagination and channel it down a new path.

A path of new beginnings.

Reinvent your life.

Starting today.

And if you have a hard time breaking free of existing constructs, remember everything is impermanent anyway. 

The house you live in, the things you own, the Berlin Wall of ideas and concepts by which you live.

Everything will be repurposed and reinvented.

It’s just a question of time.

So don’t cling.

Let go.

Your fears. Your habits. Your way of life.

It’s time for a new beginning.

Imagine it. And then do it.

Dear reader….thank you for reading this post. If you have time, please read my favorite story regarding impermanence, a Sufi story in which a king asks his wise men to give him something to stabilize his inner life.  Have a great day and week and see you next week…….M……a Pearl Seeker like you.