Posts
RULE 1 - Life is not a game.
The story we’re going to learn starts with an ultimate verity – Life is Not a Game. In fact, it’s dead-damn serious. We die in the end, you know. And we only get to do it once. So I want to get it right, because I want my life to count for something: That’s why I want this blog to change your life. I think our actions should matter. Consequently, I don’t have much patience with “gamers” who are looking for a gimmick that outsmarts the system and puts them on Easy Street. Those folks are using my air, and I don’t like that.
RULE 2 - Life is complex
I know it’s comforting to think otherwise, but there really isn’t one single over-riding secret to life. Nor are there 3 simple rules, 4 cornerstones, or 7 magic habits that guarantee success. Obedience to the 10 commandments doesn’t even guarantee you a free ticket to heaven – all the Bible promises is that obedience may lengthen your days upon the earth. There aren’t even 12 steps that can assure us of sobriety. Life just isn’t that simple.
Remember that even the one who originated the Ten Commandments had to send in his own son to straighten things out. And that didn’t work out so well either, did it? It turns out that the “simple” approaches to living your life or managing people don’t work consistently, because people are complex. We get tired, we lose focus, we suffer hormone cycles, we get headaches, we let up, we forget, we change our minds. So Life gets complex. It wears many shades of grey, not a simple black and white dichotomy. I am therefore tempted to suggest that you discard any book with a number in its title.
RULE 3 - Life happens in the trenches
In the final analysis, we’re all just trying to get from point A to point B. It’s based on common sense. How do I get Beethoven’s 5th symphony from Berlin to Orlando, and preserve it (written in 1808) so that it’s still fresh in 2009? I could use a bucket. But if I picked it up in 1808 I’d be dead by 2009 --- besides, the bucket leaks. So I have to make a special “sound bucket” – I’ll call it a phonograph. It’s just life in the trenches, slugging away down in the mud. Getting from point A to point B.
Of course, some trenches are bigger than others. What if point A were the precise place and moment of the Big Bang, and point B is right where you’re sitting, right now? How do I get one particle of matter from point A to point B when we know that space is perpetually curving and re-curving, at fluctuating speeds? I just have to make a special bucket – say the General Theory of Relativity that explains the complete space-time continuum. Point A to point B. That’s all we’re doing. And more than anything else, the solutions rely on common sense.
But wait. There’s more.
RULE 4 - Change is Dangerous
Most people get a kick out of innovation – but they really don’t like creativity, regardless of the lip service they give it. That’s because they care more about predictability and efficiency. And creativity is the enemy of both those two things.
Ø Creativity moves ahead in fits and starts & sometimes just simply wastes time and money.
Ø It is NOT a team sport.
Ø It is NOT a clear and obvious linear function.
Ø It is NOT predictable, AND worst of all,
Ø It creates change, and nobody likes that (they really don’t).
RULE 5 – Kiss safety goodbye
Many people will dislike you when you’re being creative, because you’re the source of chaos in their lives --- and maybe even an inferiority complex to boot. As a result, they will attack and belittle you. They will marginalize and ignore you, minimize and dismiss you. They will brand you as a loose cannon, and quarantine you on the periphery as dangerous to corporate or family health. They’ll accuse you of just looking for attention, and at the extreme they’ll go so far as to assert that you’re not really even creative. Ouch!
Imagine, if you will, how flabbergasted Jesus must have felt. He shared a message that was a radical departure from the contemporary theology of rules, vendetta and judgment.
Ø God doesn’t belong to any one tribe, city or nation
Ø God loves you all, and wants you to make it
Ø All you have to do is say thanks
Ø That’s it. Welcome home.
They executed him – for instigating chaos and corrupting the morals of the community. You’ll notice that the Greeks condemned Socrates for the exact same reason. Hmmm. There seems to be a universal truth in operation here: the world tends to devour change agents.
So why would anyone want to be creative?
Because there simply isn’t a better feeling in the world than the incredible buzz that comes from having a new idea. It is as close to divinity as it’s possible for a human to get. And we can do it everyday. It is, quite simply, the world’s greatest drug.
In addition, having an idea gets us out of the traffic jam of life. We mill around point A wondering what to do until (bam!) it hits us. “I know! Let’s invent someplace to go. Let’s call in point B.” Voila!
A third reason to be creative involves wealth and glory. I’d like both, but I’d settle for either one. Creativity opens the door.
On top of all that - creativity keeps the attic lit. It stimulates the mind, and invites the soul and the heart to join in. I’m having one of those magic moments as I sit here writing this, in a place you’ll never visit, at a time that will never return. Then – poof. It’s gone. But still I wear a little smile because I know that you are now sharing that moment in your own frame of time and place and I have achieved some level of immortality because you may have just picked this out of a dust bin in another century, on another planet. (I’d like to think they took the book or CD or digital version of this with them. You know, the colonists.) In short, we pursue creativity in order to leave a legacy.
RULE 6 – Be kind to cartoonists
Most of the cartoons in this blog are mine. They help me think. Sometimes, I believe they are the thought itself. So I have included them. If it helps, do some of your own.
© 2009 Joe Anderson
