Imagination Works

The major problem with our culture is the lack of a classical education and the ingestion of accelerant drugs. There. I’ve said it. Accelerant drugs is a term I made up. I’m talking about everything that revs us up too soon and too fast, from speed to diet pills to coffee or sugar–whatever makes you angry, roadrageous, and mean. When we are any of those things, we cannot learn.

Our future depends on learning.
A long time ago, education’s purpose was to show children that other people thought differently, behaved differently, and spoke differently. The purpose was not to extol one’s own culture, but to learn how to work in coalition with others. How to get along with others who don’t think like we do.

Once the industrial revolution hit, education branched off into vocational training–for those whose lives were to be spent in factories and at machine trades, and the upper classes, who studied languages and philosophy to learn how to think.

Somewhere in the 1960s, we hit a roadblock. If a subject didn’t have an immediate practical application, it was frowned upon. That quickly led to a “path” of learning. By seventh grade you were on the college track or on the vocational track, and you took courses accordingly.

And now we are paying for it. Children aren’t going to school, they are going to test-preparation classes. We aren’t teaching them how to think, or even what to think, we are teaching them to pass a test so “no child is left behind.” What we are doing is leaving a nation behind.

Right from the beginning, we are training creativity out of our children. We want them to color in the lines, and make sure the sky is blue, please. We teach them that there is only one right answer to every question. We take away the arts, music, dance, and replace them with organized sports that don’t allow for individual creativity, but praise competition and winning. Our educational system today is not appropriate for the 21st century. It is narrow, destructive of creativity and human potential, and squashes the one thing that will bring us safely into the future: original ideas that are practical and work. In a word, creativity.

Everyone is born creative. To paraphrase Picasso, the problem is not in creative children, it’s in remaining creative as we grow up. Instead of asking, “Is this the only answer?” we ask “Is this the answer that we need to know for the test?”

Wally Olins, Founder, Wolff-Olins says, “Competitive advantage does not come from the Internet. It comes from leveraging creativity. ” Maybe it’s time we remembered what education means. It comes from the Latin and means “to bring out of” and not “to stuff into.”

For a great take on creativity and education, watch Sir Ken Robinson’s talk on education. It’s not only bright, it’s very funny.

–Quinn McDonald had a classical education and thinks she’s still creative because of it. That, and she isn’t afraid of making mistakes. See her work at QuinnCreative.com

–One-room schoolhouse is the Mt. Zion school house, Snow Hill, Maryland.

Awake at Night, Alone and Afraid.

You don’t appreciate a good night’s sleep until you can no longer take it for granted. You long for a good quality of sleep and will settle for staying asleep longer than three hours. Once you feel awake, you either push yourself fully awake, or try to get back to sleep. Most often, you fall into a tossing, churning place of half-sleep and weird dreams.

Monkey mind keeps you distracted and awake
The instant you push yourself awake, monkey mind starts listing the things you need to get done, the dwindling amount of money in your bank account, the stupid thing you said, on and on until you are awake, far from sleep.

As a woman of a certain age, I am familiar with nighttime monkey-mind—the chattering, nerve-wracking, topic-hopping self-talk that won’t let you rest. The anxiety-filled dreams aren’t any better. They won’t let you wake up and won’t let you sleep deeply.

Using insomnia in a creative way
What’s a creative person to do? Rest is so important to creativity (and sanity) that waking up at 2 a.m. creates stress in the realization that you will feel pulled through a keyhole the next morning.

After spending too many nights punching pillows and plucking at sheets, I decided there had to be something better than trying to force myself to sleep (doesn’t work) or running to-do lists through my head (not productive). What could I do that engaged my mind, calmed my nerves and ended up contributing to something creative?

Start simply, add creativity
I started small. Using an exercise from my creativity coach mentor, Eric Maisel, I find a comfortable position and say (in my head) the word “Hush,” dragging out the ‘sh’ sound for a breath. After a little practice and concentration, it quieted monkey-mind. First step accomplished.

Next, I added visualization. While keeping monkey-mind quiet with ‘hush,’ I imagined walking down a long garden walkway. I concentrated on details—the kind of plants, the slant of the sun, the color of the blossoms. I imagined coming to a fountain in an open space. Next to the fountain, on the broad, stone edge, is a beautiful wood box. I become curious. “What’s in the box?” It could be anything wonderful—an idea, a symbol, an amulet, a design. I deliberately touch the box, feel the pattern in the lid, spend time in wonder. When I feel totally aware, completely present, and filled with curiosity, I open the lid.  What do I see?

The first few times, I saw things that belonged to me and were in the bedroom. No matter what it is, I lift it out of the box, hold it, wonder about it.  I remember it  for reflection the next day. Then I put the object back in the box, close the lid and walk back down the path.

It’s not always brilliant, but it’s always interesting
Often, by the time I walk back up the path, I’m asleep. But here are some other things that have happened:

1. Someone else comes into the garden. This isn’t a planned part of the visualization, but I let it develop. He says he can’t see his reflection in the fountain’s water. The next day, I reflect on the meaning, “What am I not seeing?” and “What part of me is not being seen?”  The answers helped clear up an old problem that I had been wrestling with.

2. When I opened the box, I found a small paper scrap, like an old postage stamp, but with raised writing that I couldn’t read. Eventually, this idea developed into silver Talistones, a part of my jewelry business that touches a deeply spiritual place in my clients.

3.  While in the garden, the season changes from warm to cold. I’m cranky because it just turned warm, and now it’s cold again. I suddenly jerk awake to discover my husband has wrapped himself in all the covers.

Sleep thinking makes an interesting dream journal
In most cases, I fall asleep during the visualization. The next morning, I write down what I remember of the visualization or resulting dream. Dreams evaporate quickly, so I write it down as soon as I wake up.

Sometimes, although complex, I feel the dream means nothing. Sometimes I feel it does, and I try to focus it into a meaningful action or idea. Sometimes the ideas take months to develop. Occasionally, I’ll go back and read dreams from months ago, and have ideas that are new.

Sleep thinking isn’t hard or a lot of work. Your brain has more downtime at night, so you can make the most of it. And getting back to sleep is a nice side effect of putting your brain to work.

(c) 2007. Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com

My friend Anna and I were having lunch. She ordered a Thai salad that came with peanuts, and asked the waiter to eliminate the nuts because she was horribly allergic.

“I didn’t know you were allergic to peanuts,” I said.
“I’m not,” she said, adding, “but I don’t like them and I should be able to get what I want. If I tell them I don’t like them, they won’t remove them.”

We got the orders to go and moved to the outside patio. It was one of the first perfect spring days—sunny and mild. I moved toward a table and Anna said, “Not there. It’s too close to the street, and the dogs that walk by get their bacteria-filled noses too close to my food.” That left a place in the sun and a place in the shade. Anna refused to sit in the sun because UV rays cause skin damage and disliked the shade because it was under a tree filled with chattering birds—and she wasn’t risking “ bird poop on my lunch.”

We moved back inside, and Anna found a table that met her needs—not too close to the window’s glare, not too close to the kitchen’s noise, and absolutely not too close to the ladies’ room door. I felt relieved we found a table that worked for her.

Setting limits on your life doesn’t expand your universe
As the conversation crossed over from the expected cicada explosion to Anna’s yoga class, I discovered that Anna had asked to work from home if the cicada numbers were more than she could stand, because she hated flying bugs, and that the yoga teacher had offended her because he had demonstrated a meditation technique that was not the same as her meditation teacher used. She had quit the yoga class.

“How will the one meditation interfere with the other?” I wanted to know.
“I chose my meditation technique very carefully,” Anna said. “I don’t want something else interfering with it. I’d have to ask my meditation instructor if it was OK to try something else. I don’t want to risk damaging what I’ve learned.”

“But you enjoyed the yoga so much. Why quit the whole class over a demonstration?”

Anna shrugged. “I thought it was offensive that he would barge into our yoga structure with a meditation technique. My first husband was like that—always buying g new stuff and bringing it home without asking. I’m not going through that again.”

Limiting our lives takes work
Since that lunch, I’ve given a lot of thought to how we manage the space in our lives. We start out as babies, the whole world open before us. As new experiences come to us, we learn, make decisions, learn consequences.

Then we begin to close doors to experience. We have a bad experience, generalize the consequence. We won’t try that again. Slam! That room is closed off. Our friends make fun of us because we like country music. Slam! goes the door on people who don’t like country music. We meet a man who is a vegetarian. Uh-oh, the last boyfriend who was a vegetarian was a lousy cook. Slam! No more vegetarian boyfriends. And while we are at it—Slam! No more lousy cooks in our lives.

It doesn’t take long for us to limit ourselves. If we slam enough doors, our lives get small with limited choices. The choices we have left don’t seem interesting anymore. We feel emotionally claustrophobic. But we resist change or new things. After all, we reason, ‘Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me.’ Vulnerability could lead to pain, and we know we don’t like that.

What we resist, persists
Slamming the door doesn’t solve the problem, improve our chances, or give us perspective—it simply puts up another barrier to what is possible in our lives. The barriers become our horizons, and we begin to take on the chore of living in that limited world. Pretty soon we feel put upon, martyred, with no way out. And worst of all, we don’t see it as a world of our own creation, so we feel trapped and angry at someone else—the boyfriend who couldn’t cook, the friend who hates country music.

Tomorrow: some exercises that lead to solutions. Quinn McDonald is a writer and certified creativity coach. You can see her notecards, journals and handmade paper bowls here.