Are you doing something creative right now? Are you trying to change things or start something new or do something big? Are you trying to move this generation in an unexpected way? I think we all are on some level and it's a pretty exciting time to be alive.
One of the things we often do when we find ourselves in this position is seek guidance from the people that have done something similar before. We might rage against the notion that nothing is new under the sun, but it is usually not impossible to find someone with an experience we can learn from. So we turn toward the experts that we consider seasoned and smart, battle worn and storm tested. Whether in the form of a book or a lunch appointment, we find ways to probe what they did and learn from them.
I think this can be a critical part of growing something new and I am currently seeking guidance from a wide net of people as I work on my book. I truly believe there is much I can learn from the expertise of others. Wise counsel is not to be undervalued, but it is to be analyzed. It is to be questioned and studied and weighed and sometimes dismissed. We cannot blindly assume that those older than us have spent their years gathering wisdom and knowledge. Sometimes they have simply spent their years. I didn't understand this clearly until I read a passage in a book recently:
"You can gain experience, if you are careful to avoid empty redundancy. Do not fall into the error of the artisan who boasts of twenty years experience in his craft while in fact he has had only one year of experience – twenty times."
I love that quote but the flipside to avoiding people that have lived redundantly is to look at our own lives. I've written advertising for more than ten years, but if I am honest, I probably have far less years of experience. That's part of the reason I like trying new things and taking on new challenges. I still have almost half of 2008 left and the quote above challenged me to look at it in a different way.
I don't want to finish this year with only a few months experience gained. I don't ever want to live life redundantly.
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3 comments:
Okay, Jon. I think this is going to be my favorite of the four blogs. I'm really feeling this one. Having nothing else of any significance to say, I'll just leave you with a few of my favorite quotes on the subject of creativity:
"We lose ourselves in our love of the task before us, and in that moment we learn an identity that lives both within us and beyond us." --Theodeu Roszak
"If you see in any given situation only what everybody else can see, you can be said to be so much a representative of your culture that you are a victim of it." --S. I. Hayakawa
"As an artist it is central to be unsatisfied! This isn't greed, though it might be appetite." --Lawrence Calcagno
"The creation of something new is not accomplished by the intellect but by the play instinct acting from inner necessity. The creative mind plays with objects it loves." --Carl Jung
"Every child is an artist. The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up." --Pablo Picasso
"In the year of our Lord 1314, patriots of Scotland, starving and outnumbered, charged the fields of Bannockburn. They fought like warrior poets. They fought like Scotsmen. And won their freedom." --Robert the Bruce (okay, so I just threw that one in)
Jon, would you mind sharing what book you got that quote from?
Great thoughts Jon. I've often thought I've learned more in the last 3 years of my life then I have in the previous 20, and I've loved it. It's been rough, but well worth it.
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