When I was in graduate school, I took a class called "Creativity in Business." It really wasn't as much about the nominal topic as it was about awakening from our auto-pilot lives to look at the world differently.
The professor chunked the term into three and four-day segments, and then he gave us a perspective shift that we were to bring to our lives for each segment. I truly don't remember most of them, but one is very sharp in my memory to this day. "See the world through the eyes of a three-year old" was our task for one of those segments.
I remember being astounded, both by what I normally missed that a three-year old would see, as well as what I normally saw that a three-year old would either miss or would have absolutely no interest in. I noticed things in nature that were close to the ground that I'd never noticed or at least not in decades, including a smashingly beautiful beetle. I also had to abandon interest in the news and bigger problems of the day and be much more carefree.
This perspective was brought home to me again last evening when "my babies" arrived. They are staying in a guest suite down the hall. I gathered the girls up to walk back to my apartment for a snack while their parents set up the portable crib and unpacked. The two-year-old threw here arms up in "victory stance" (more on this later) and ran as fast as her little legs would carry her, squealing every inch of the way.
It was late, and, at first, I was concerned about waking my neighbors. Then I thought, "Could I do that?" Not would I do that, but could I do it. The difference isn't semantic. Would implies that I could but would make a judgment about whether, for a wide range of reasons, I would allow myself to embrace life so totally and completely.
To throw 100 percent of my being totally and completely into, well, just being! The last time I threw 100 percent of myself into anything was the five days in which I wrote The Game Called Life--13 years ago. Yet, even that was a mental/intellectual surrender. The two-year-old not only let go of any constraints, but she threw here whole being into...being. There was something really magical about how totally she threw herself into just going for it.
The "victory stance" is the posture that people across time and cultures have thrown into celebration of victory. We've all seen it countless times. Think of the victor at the finish of a race, chest up and out with arms extended upward in a V-position. That is the victory stance, and that is exactly the posture that Ava took as she ran full-out down my hall. It ends up that the victory stance isn't just about celebrating something a person just did well, but when we take that posture, chemicals in our brains are released that propel us into a future success.
The question that came to me "Could I do that?" reflected my personal doubt that I could not only throw myself intellectually into something, but could also put every bit of my passion into just assuming victory, even before I went anywhere, to just know that if I threw myself into whatever, I would just want to squeal with unadulterated joy. I've done that occasionally on the dance floor, but it has been a very long time. What I forgot is that the very act of being victorious actually creates victory.
So, I tweaked the perspective-shift my professor assigned, and instead of seeing the world from the eyes of the three-year-old, I wondered if I could be through the heart of a two-year-old. I really am not sure I can, but, if there is anything I know in my heart, I know that is what I want to be. Full-out 100 percent. I'd say the "but" is that I don't know anything I care that much about, but that is the very thing about what that sweet little girl Ava did: she was 100 percent full-out about nothing. She was 100 percent full-out about life for absolutely no reason except that it felt good.
When I think about my creativity in business class, which I've described as awakening me from my auto-pilot life to look at the world differently, I really wonder if maybe it has taken me decades to figure out what that really meant--that it really meant to be 100 percent for no reason at all: just because.
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