What the Donkey Did

Some of my biggest creative influences are books by Roger von Oech.  I first came across his book A Whack on the Side of the Head in the 1980's.  His focus on approaching challenges, problems, projects by uncommon means and a sense of play spoke to me and reinforced things I was doing that I didn't know I was doing or why I was doing them.  Books like Whack, A Kick in the Seat of the Pants and Expect the Unexpected or You Won't Find It gave me a vocabulary and context for my approach to creativity.  His Creative Whack Pack is a much used app on my phone, good for a quick "Whack" when I need some inspiration.

His book Expect the Unexpected has a list of 30 sayings by Heraclitus, a pre-Socratic thinker, that challenges the reader to go through on a daily basis to try to find the sense in the thought and see how it might have an influence on what the reader is facing.  Since starting this blog, I've been drawn back to my creative roots, as it were, and revisit the wisdom of Heraclitus.

Today's thought is:

DONKEYS PREFER GARBAGE TO GOLD

The first thing that came to my mind is a song from the 1940s made popular by Bing Crosby called "Would You Like to Swing on a Star."

The first part of the song goes like this...

Oh would you like to swing on a star
Carry moonbeams home in a jar
and be better off than you are
or would you rather be a mule

A mule is an animal with long funny ears
Kicks up at anything he hears
His back is brawny but his brain is weak
He's just plain stupid with a stubborn streak
And by the way if you hate to go to school
You may grow up to be a mule

Donkey.  Mule.  Much the same thing for my purposes.  The thing that sticks out to me is the stubbornness of the animal.  I can see in my mind's eye all the old Westerns of my childhood where the horse is running free and fast while the mule/donkey has his feet dug in while braying at full volume, while the old prospector is pulling on the rope.  When I'm stubborn, I close my mind, my ears and my heart to anything that might be ahead.  No one can talk to me because in my head I'm making so much noise that I don't hear what they're really saying.  No one can convince me because I refuse to be convinced.  No one can touch me because I've closed myself off to any possibility for good that might come out of this journey.

When this happens, I can only watch the horse with it's flowing mane and tail and either be contemptuous or jealous.  Either will cause rot in my life and both are completely unnecessary.

So how does this help unlock my creativity?

1. Knowledge is power.  Knowledge of myself is freedom. Or is it?  I've begun to recognize my own personal symptoms of stubbornness and I'm trying to learn the difference between the blinding sort of stubbornness that stifles me and the kind of stubbornness that keeps me focused on my goals.  I read something once that talked about the more "realistic" a person was about themselves, the more honest they were about their strengths and weaknesses, the less likely they were to be a "super succeeder."  Ok, I made that word up but that's the gist of it.  Their own personal reality, regardless of whether it agreed with the wider reality or not, is all they acknowledge.  It's the famous Adam Savage (Mythbusters) line of, "I reject your reality and substitute my own."  There's that fine line between blindness and focus. 
2. Do I settle for the garbage or do I go for the gold?  What is garbage and what is gold?  Is it always the same or does it depend on context?  Think about the things that were of the utmost importance to you when you were 5 years old.  Were they the same things when you were 16? How many of us who have passed through those teenage years would long to sooth a teenager by telling them that in a few short years, those things that they find so devastating will no longer matter?  It doesn't do a single thing to sooth their hearts but we just try to keep them going until they make the discovery for themselves. I have to determine what's important in the current circumstances and be focused on that without getting distracted by the garbage.
   
   Otherwise you run the risk of being like this guy:

So all of this to say that, for me, for today, I need to keep my mind, ears and heart open to all that's around me and focus on the things that have true importance for me in this moment.  

You will come up with a completely different thought about what this "Creative Enigma of Heraclitus" means.  I hope you do and I hope it opens you to things you might not have thought about before.  That's the magic!