The whole world is out to get you. All the signs are there. You never get a lucky break. People always treat you like dirt. And the few people who are nice? They’re after something, obviously. Everyone else is on a life-long personal vendetta to make your existence slightly more unpleasant: the people at the bank, your boss, politicians, that team you support who always loses just to spite you, and random children & animals who insist on walking in front of you when you’re so busy mulling the sorry state of the world.

Go on, admit it. You’ve had all this go through your head at some point. But some of you have this going through your head all the time. There, you see, you were just thinking it right now. To you, ladies and gentlemen of the persecuted elite, I tip my hat in awe. I would like to come up to each one of you personally, and shake your hand. Because to truly believe and live with the faith that the entire human race and stray rocks are out to make your life miserable, requires a level of self-confidence and ego that is tremendous. With that level of confidence in yourself you must all be the most creative and productive people in the world!

Why the awkward silence? What is this you say? You’re neither creative nor productive? I think I can explain the problem. Like all good human stories it starts a long time ago, on a tree far far away. The early mammals were likely always running away from dinosaurs. Hey, I don’t care if it’s true, it just looks much cooler in my head this way. So anyway, since they had to always keep an eye out for the supporting cast of Jurassic Park around every tree bark, they developed a drug habit. Every time there was the possibility of danger, their brain sent out a signal which pumped their blood with a wonderful energy drink called adrenaline. Suddenly they were filled with the instinct and energy to fight or escape whatever threatened them (fight or flight).

This drug habit worked out well for them. It meant more of these little mammals survived and avoided becoming buffalo wings for some hungry dino. Of course, back then they weren’t called buffalo wings because buffalo hadn’t been invented yet, but I digress. Eventually the dinos died out for having played too dangerously on the cosmic stock market, and the little scurrying creatures survived due to their frugal lifestyle. But the drug habit continued, because there were always new things to be threatened by.

Over the aeons, those mammals evolved and moved into caves to get away from deadly predators, and then into buildings. But while the old predators had died out and been forced into the entertainment industry, our drug lust didn’t stop. It’s quite difficult to break a 100 million year old habit. It still has its uses, of course, when you’re trying to save yourself from a burning building, or you’re trying to throw yourself out of the way of a runaway bus, but how often do those things happen to you? Not regularly, I hope. The rest of the time, our adrenaline-junkie brains make up imaginary dinos for us to run from.

Back when we were still in the caves, one or two trouble makers found a solution. They were the first to say things like, “To hell with all that hunting, man!”, and, “I’m never going to work for THE (cave) MAN,” and, “Make finger paintings not dangerous bare-fisted battle with a woolly mammoth.” Those were the first human beings that realised there was a way without the drug they had been used to, and that there was a drug with a much bigger high: creativity. Not only did they realise that getting rid of the adrenaline gifted them with the spark of creativity, but also that the spark of creative thinking helped set them free from the flight and fright feeling. This is why they went on to invent spears, solid walls, fortresses, and eventually frozen chicken.

Obviously, the rest of the population of fine upstanding cave dwellers thought these proto-artists and proto-inventors were nuts. Sure they went on tours of the neighbouring painted cave on their holidays, and sure they started copying those strange spear things the weirdos had come up with because it made the hunt less tiresome, but they weren’t falling for any of this creativity rubbish. No, they were still old fashioned, traditional people, and they preferred their drugs in adrenaline shaped bottles, thank you very much! So while the art and invention was being developed in one corner they created something more sinister in the other: gossip, and the news. You see, now it didn’t matter if dinos were chasing you, you could just hear about how dinos allegedly chased someone else and the adrenaline would taste just as good, the stress would feel just as real, and you could constantly scurry around like it was the good old days on the trees.

It was inevitable, because giving in to baser instincts is easy. Creativity is also an instinct, but one that only flourishes when the parasitic influences of fear and aggression have been removed from the equation. The cave painters knew that. Giving in was easy for them too, but keeping their heads and being creative human beings in spite of all the chemicals rushing through their blood that told them otherwise, was hard. Like those early pioneers, even today some people choose this hard path, in whatever field of endeavour they might be, because painting is not the only creative act. They choose to ignore the most powerful antagonist, their own basic natures, to do more and be more. Who would you respect, someone who always takes the easy way through everything, never achieving their best, or someone who takes the hard route, ever striving towards their best? Are there any doubts as to why the whole world is not jumping with joy every time they see you?

So, embrace the fact that you are human and meant for more than scurrying around headless. First I suggest you go break your ridiculous addiction to the news and current events, and then come back and talk to me when you are sober. I promise, I will welcome you with a warm embrace, each and every one of you. We can sit together and laugh about the good old caveman days, when the whole world was out to get you.

Samir

Few amongst us take stock of our lives regularly, if ever. But, there are those occasions when life forces us to rethink and re-evaluate where we have come from, and where we are heading. These are significant, pivotal moments when drastic changes compel us to take a few moments in thought and see the forest for the trees. Wouldn’t it be better if we were asking ourselves these questions and answering them honestly when there wasn’t a proverbial gun held to our heads? I think so, and I wanted to share with you one of the ways I do it.

My madness you are familiar with, but one of the current methods to this madness I stumbled upon quite by accident. A few years ago I got myself a new mobile phone. I still use the same one today, but back then it was state-of-the-art with an infra-red connection and 12 whole megabytes of memory. It still had a limit to how many text messages it could store though. I like keeping a record of my conversations, so when the phone first filled up, I figured out how it could connect to an old laptop I had and back up all the messages stored on it. I was very happy with myself, but when I had to repeat the performance a few months later it didn’t work, and it never has since.

At the time, in a moment of boredom, I decided on a strange solution: I would write down all the messages in my inbox and sent folder in an old diary I had lying around. Back then I thought it was a one-time thing until I figured out the connection glitches, but I’ve been writing down messages with pen & paper in that old diary ever since. I’m glad I do, because what started as an act of desperation has proved to be a very useful exercise over the years. Let no man ever claim that failures of technology have no benefits.

I’m not one of those obsessively texting teenagers (or any sort of teenager for that matter), so every few months my phone hits its limit and starts warning me that it’s running out of space for messages. This happened continuously over the past weeks. During a particularly procrastinatory mood a few days ago, I decided to sit down with my diary and do the needful.

Looking through my old messages in the correct chronological order is like a telegraphic recap of my life over the past few months, and I always find it fascinating. As I read through the vague shadows of past conversations and events, more comes flooding back, the short text acting like mnemonic triggers, and I inevitably start asking myself some useful questions:

Where was I back then?

My current batch of messages started towards the end of December 2008. At the time I was very busy churning out articles and layouts for the regular magazine project I was working on. We were behind schedule and it looked like work would continue well into the first week of the new year, which it did.

When I finally laid that project to rest, I got a call from another designer friend who wanted help with some of her more technical work, and we had a meeting in which we discussed the looming deadline this work was to be completed by. As I read our messages arranging the meeting, I realised it had been 3 months since that meeting, the project had never quite materialised, and I had forgotten.

There were plenty of other tales in those snippets: College friends who were back in town for a quick visit after many years, online chat appointments with clients, design issues for an artist friend’s website, trips to the airport, long lost school buddies. A lot happens in 3 months of your life, even a quiet life like mine. A lot happens, and at the same time many things stand still.

Where did I want to go?

The magazine project was a business boon that provided some regular work over the last year, but every time I was working on it I looked forward to finishing it so that I could move on to other things. Writing and laying out a magazine, even a small one, can be all-consuming. So with the magazine done, I was glad I wouldn’t have to worry about that for another 2 months.

I had a handful of ideas for websites and other things I wanted to get started on. the plan was to build them up over the coming months, and have them ready and running so that regular work and updates on them could continue.

My other big to-do was to get back to writing some fiction after a hiatus of many years. Writing has always been a passion, and fiction especially so. Over the years though, I have had more occasion to write non-fiction articles and my more fanciful writing gradually took a back seat until it completely vanished. In January, I decided I must tackle a short story at worst, or ideally start writing one of the many ideas for a full sized novel I had in my notebooks.

Am I getting there?

I look back at all those things and in a word: no. I have barely put up a few place-holder pages for the web site ideas. I have done almost nothing on my other schemes, and I have yet to write a single sentence of fiction.

An honest evaluation of your progress, such as this, is very tough to face, but completely necessary if you want to seriously re-evaluate things as they stand.

Do I still want to go there?

Yes I do. I haven’t changed my mind about anything I wanted to do when my phone’s message archive began. There have definitely been refinements in some of my ideas, and the thrust of some others have been altered in my head, due to new things I’ve learnt or changing priorities. But the essentials stay unchanged.

Changing priorities and rethinking whether your old dragons are still ones you wish to slay is an important question to ask yourself, and the one question we often lie about. It is usually easier to chase our old aims in a half-hearted way than to admit to ourselves that those goals and dreams no longer interest us. Always a tough call to make, but don’t think of past time spent pursuing something you’ve changed your mind about as time wasted. It rarely is, and lessons learnt are ever applicable to new situations.

What stopped me from getting there?

These questions of ourselves get more and more difficult to answer honestly because our own minds get more treacherous and self-aggrandizing as we dig deeper. In my case the simple answer to this question would be: laziness. But, laziness and procrastination are usually symptoms rather than causes. The causes can be several:

Did I over reach?

I always do, and I am aware of this. But we aren’t always aware of our impractical demands upon ourselves. A fair measure of whether or not something we wish to do is doable usually escapes us until much later and that is a tendency to fight, for our own sanity.

Did I under perform?

Yes again, and the trick here is always to specifically think about the mechanics of how you didn’t do enough, rather than think in generalities.

Did I just not know clearly where I was going?

Also true, and in my case it is often from wanting to go too many places at once. That need not be true for everyone. It is perfectly possible to be unclear of what you want to do even when focussed on a single task. It falls upon us to recognise that and correct it in time before too much is lost in the process of finding your way in the darkness.

What held me back? What distracted me?

Not being focussed on a manageable number of things for one, runaway research, and there is always my need to carry out elaborate conversations with people using any and all mediums at my disposal. I enjoy it and I still wouldn’t give up on it, but like all things it needs to be done in a controlled and organised way. It’s just too easy to wake up in the morning, get straight into your email or Twitter account, and only realise at bed time that the day is over and you did none of the ‘work’ on your to-do list.

All things in moderation, is a worthy motto in life. The same can be said for whatever distracts you regularly from what you want to be doing.

What pushed me in the right direction?

In spite of all the critique and self-criticisms that are a necessary part of any healthy self-evaluation, taking stock of your life should emphasize equally what has worked well, and what is working to take you towards your goals.

I mentioned runaway research as being one of the things that distracted me; It is my personal favourite form of procrastination. But, I also need to admit that not all that unplanned and un-metered research was a waste. A lot comes out of my aimless wanderings and devourings of technical trivia. Many new ideas are born this way, and over the past few months, my reading has gained me insights which will very positively affect all my projects in the future. I will also save myself a lot of grief and failures due to things I have learnt that I didn’t know before. Also, some of these research marathons provided the immediate stimulus for me to do whatever little I did get done.

Never forget to look at what is working well. If something is working for you, do more of it, and if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

How does where I wanted to go back then gel with what I now know, to change my path forward?

While I’ve always loved my long conversations with people, I was nowhere as active in online social forums at the beginning of this year. While that provided one of the main distractions against my progress it has also taught me a lot and changed my mind about some of my plans.

Back then I was planning on working on my various ideas and website projects in isolation, and letting my own site languish for want of a good reason or audience to keep it going at a healthy pace. Now, I am convinced my own site is still a key element of my various plans, without which all of it will never quite work at its full potential.

While I’ve always though in a big-picture, interdependent sort of way when it comes to my plans and ideas, the past few months of online social activity and the very interesting and dear people I have met, has changed my perspective on my plans a bit. Now I’m thinking in a more organic way as to how the various pieces of the picture should grow, and how I should never lose sight of my own personal web site, and the people who grace it with their attention along the way .

As I closed my diary of short message wonders after a few hours of diligent transcription, my fingers were sore and I needed to stretch to get my limbs working again. In that itself, I came to the realisation that I almost never use a pen to write any more. Continuous keyboard use had let my writing muscles atrophy to a sad state. And with this I decided that any fiction writing that was to happen would happen on paper. In writing as in other things in life I guess ‘use it or lose it’ holds true.

My ritual stock taking of life was now over and I would not return to it for a few months. As always I found the process enlightening and educational. In the rush of everyday life we forget to step back and think of what it is we are doing, and such rethinks and re-evaluations are a must if you are one of those who want to do more than merely survive for the length of your life.

I clicked on the over-used keys on my phone, and navigated the menus to the fateful choice that said: Clear All Messages. After warning me of the permanent consequences and asking for my approval, the phone froze for a moment and then the messages were gone. My phone was clear, my mind was clear, and the future was filled with possibilities.

Samir

Go forth and have an affair to remember. I’m not advocating promiscuity in your relationships, but rather in your creativity and your ideas. The good thing is that ideas don’t have feelings that can be hurt, or self esteems that can be crushed. Your mixing it up a bit with your ideas is not going to make you a bad person, just a more creative one.

In a few more days we will be at the vernal equinox. Spring is here, and in this age of global warming, you might as well take advantage of the weather to have a summer fling a little early. A spring fling with a new idea is the perfect way to kick start your creativity and be happier in the process.

Why is it then that so few of us take this plunge into a whirlwind romance? There are usually three reasons we get stuck in a rut when it comes to ideas:

1] Too few ideas

If you haven’t yet perfected your own method of generating new ideas at will, it is likely you are a bit uptight about the few ideas you have. Possessiveness is a negative emotion, as much with ideas as with people, and sometimes you have to let go. To get more comfortable, discover some new ways to brainstorm and generate ideas. Once you realise there are more fish in the sea, perhaps you will loosen up a little and take the odd chance on a casual fling.

2] Too many ideas

You could have the opposite problem. You’re spoilt for choice and so you’re never quite sure which of the thousands of ideas to choose to select wallpaper with, and which to consider as temporary distraction to have a little fun with. I have news for you, there is no magic bolt from the sky which will make these decisions for you. If you have too much to deal with, choose one promising idea at random and pursue it like a lovestruck teenager. Maybe it is a short affair, a minor infatuation, but at least you will enjoy the time you have together and maybe you’ll even be friends for life. We can all use all the friends we can get.

3] Too serious about ideas

The most common reason for freezing up with your ideas is that you are too embroiled in them. You think too much and take every idea too seriously. Just barely have you laid eyes on a vaguely pretty face of a new concept, and you’ve already started planning your future together, and how you’ll spend your long weekends, and who’ll take out the trash. All this before you’ve found out if the object of you attentions is worth your attention in the first place. To take your ideas too seriously prematurely is as deadly as being frivolous about them once they develop. You have to realise that every idea you come across is not your soul mate, and you must also realise that engaging these temporary distractions helps you grow and gives you happiness that is as important in the long run as that big idea you’re still waiting for over the horizon.

All these possible scenarios lead you to be overly attached to your ideas and that blocks everything. You could be out there in the golden spring Sun courting a beauty and accepting that it’s not meant to last, and instead you are sitting in here worrying over who will take care of whom when you get old.

Get over it. Pick an idea and run with it. A quick and breezy romance is often just what the doctor ordered for the creative type. Something that doesn’t require too much thought or planning, or guessing and second guessing. Something that is fun while it lasts and enriches your experiences for ever more. At worst it teaches you a few valuable lessons, but you can’t abstain from these in fear of the future if you hope to continue being creative.

Spring flings and quickly executed ideas are good for you, like a stint of quick exercise, or an unexpected surprise. Indulge in these without guilt because your spring flings with ideas will gift you with spontaneity, courage, and self confidence, all of which will be invaluable when you do want to tackle a serious idea which you would like to spend the rest of your life with.

You know that little hottie you’ve been flirting with or eyeing cautiously from afar? Take them out for a spin. Take a chance, make your move in good faith and with good humour. Delay too much and some other creative devil will swoop in while you’re blushing and dilly-dallying and sweep them off their feet. You would have missed an opportunity, an experience, and things will never be exactly the same again. Times change. At best you’ll be invited to their whirlwind wedding and enjoy some free food. At worst you’ll be stuck with baby sitting their pesky kids forever. Doesn’t a casual fling sound like more fun?

Samir

I’m joseph and 14 years old. And I NEVER belived once in global warming. But I hate it that my science teacher is theaching us global warming. I don’t realy want to particapate in it, but if I dont, I just might fail this class. And I don’t want that. what am i gonna do?

And what follows is my reply to Joseph, and the little bit of Joseph in all of us.

Dear Joseph,

The fact that someone your age is even considering these issues is a positive step in my book.

Always be clear about what you (don’t) believe

Firstly, when you say you don’t believe in global warming, what do you mean? Do you not believe that the Earth is going through temperature changes? That’s a little difficult to disprove. I think weather monitors everywhere have been recording consistently warmer summers for many years now.

Or, do you not believe that human beings are causing the warming? That can be argued either way with the right statistics, so we’ll leave that alone. The point is that you must know for sure what it is you are for or against, before you can be for or against it.

The value of real learning

Now let’s come to your actual problem, your science teacher teaching you about global warming which you don’t believe in. Learning is about getting new knowledge without bias. Don’t believe in Global Warming? Doesn’t matter. If you want to be educated, you need to know what it is and why it’s supposed to be true. If you want to get anywhere in life, my honest advice would be to at least learn to listen to every point of view you come across, and accept the fact that you will not agree with all of them. Also accept the fact that you can sometimes be wrong because you don’t know enough.

Don’t fear the knowledge

Think about this. Why would you not want to participate in a class about something you don’t believe in? What’s the harm? One of three things can happen:

1) You learn more and realise how right you were in your belief.
2) You learn nothing new but are exposed to other people’s thoughts on the subject which enriches your thinking.
3) You learn more and realise that maybe there is something to this thing you didn’t believe in after all.

Don’t you see, you win in every way. The only reason to be afraid of exposing yourself to new knowledge is if you are afraid that you will change your mind about something that you think right now. If it’s a matter of knowledge, then you very well might change your mind so there’s no point hiding from the facts. If it’s a matter of faith, then testing it shouldn’t shake it if it is strong. Instead it should make it stronger.

Knowledge vs Faith

I don’t think something like global warming is a matter of faith. It’s a mater of knowledge. Is it possible that global warming is not mainly caused by human activity at all? Absolutely, and anyone who refuses that blindly is just as bad as the zealots on the other side. But human activity is our best and most fitting hypothesis.

Science is not about absolute truths, it is about finding the best answers to our question about the world around us, from what we know today. These answers keep changing, but that is part of the game. The answers change because every day people go out there and try to know more.

Imagine if someone 50 years ago would have refused to learn more about electronics because they didn’t believe hundreds and thousands of components could be put on a single chip. They were probably right to believe it at the time, but if they had refused to learn more, the modern computer would have never been invented and we wouldn’t be having this discussion in this way.

Knowledge and responsibility

I’m sure you’ve watched the Spiderman movies. Even if you haven’t, a major theme in them is the fact that “with great power comes great responsibility.” Combine that with the age old idea that knowledge is power and we must conclude that with great knowledge comes great responsibility. When the knowledge is out there, ignoring it is not an option, that would just be running away from your power. Instead it is your responsibility to accept it, embrace it, study it, and give it its due attention. This doesn’t mean you have to agree with it all, but what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and knowledge certainly can’t kill you.

Engaging the Opposing View Point

How do you deal with a situation where you are being taught something you don’t believe in? Ask more questions. Ask deeper questions. If your teacher won’t answer them, ask someone else who will. Read a book.

Having done all this, if your belief is unshaken, don’t be ashamed of it, but at least acknowledge the fact that learning more has made your knowledge and your thinking on the subject deeper. When you’re asked in an exam to explain the mechanics of global warming, do so from what you have learnt. Whether or not you believe in it was not part of the question asked. School exams are rarely about what you believe, but rather about what someone else believed many years ago. Don’t take it to mean anything more than that.

Embrace knowledge but also learn to look at in a detached way. That will serve you well in the long run

The only sure thing

At the age of 14, I can only guarantee you one thing in life: In the future, you will change your mind about some things you believe today. It is inevitable. At my age (twice yours) most people’s beliefs are already frozen in rock, hard, unyielding, and often wrong. If there’s one thing you want to learn from school, let it be to never let your beliefs harden to that extent. Stay open to new ideas, learn new things, and you will enrich your beliefs and be a better and happier human being for it. By now you know that there is no better aim in life than that.

I hope this has answered some of your questions, and whatever other doubts this might bring up you are are welcome to share here. Above all, keep up this spirit of questioning. Not only is it healthy to question the beliefs of others on a regular basis, but better yet make it a habit to question your own.

Take care,
Samir

Do you think you know what perseverance is? We all do. If you have attempted anything beyond mere survival on this planet, you have surely come across obstacles, at which point someone has advised you to persevere, universally understood as sticking to it. While that tells you what persevering involves, it does not enlighten you on how to go about this whole business of sticking to it.

To understand how to persevere you must understand that perseverance is not a singular concept but a plural one. The two ‘P’s of perseverance must become your constant companions and your close friends if you are to last the distance and reach your goals.

Persistence is the active phase of perseverance. To persist is to act according to your plans and aims, no matter what the discouraging results and circumstances. You must often become an unstoppable force of positive action in the shadow of stiff opposition, both internal and external, to achieve most things of value. Such is the nature of things, and this is the price you must pay for striving beyond the mundane.

Patience is the passive phase of perseverance and is an acknowledgment of the fact that striving doesn’t always solve everything. The universe is a complex thing with an infinite number of variables and forces constantly at play. To say that circumstances are ever-changing and that things are not always conducive to restless action is an understatement. Often to persevere is to simply wait for better times to come, so that so that when you take the proper action, you get the expected results.

This patience in the face of unavoidable circumstance is a much ignored part of perseverance. It is as essential a component of it as the much celebrated persistence. To court one without the counsel of the other is to invite disaster, because the persistent juggernaut destroys all in its path and the patient Buddha often fails to set off on the path in the first place. Either way a pleasant journey is impossible and the end unreachable.

Befriend both the juggernaut and the Buddha within, and make sure you learn to temper their strengths with the fine guiding hand of human compassion. Do this and your every journey will be a success and your every destination in reach.

Samir

Written in response to the Litemind Personal Excellence Project

Conformity vs individuality is a matter very close to the discussion about the originality of creative ideas, which I have gotten into before and I am sure I will again. The question of individuality was brought up again recently when I received a comment on my article about creativity and religious thought from Curtis who said:

If your life revolves around what others think of you, as these words seem to suggest, then Ayn Rand is not the author for you.

A grand pronuncement indeed on what was a personal story about my second-hand exposure to the works of Ayn Rand and how I hadn’t gotten around to reading them. I’m generally in the habit of questioning grand pronouncements, or at least digging deeper into them, so I thought it only right that I explore further this whole phenomenon of caring about what other people think of you, and also caring about whether other people think you care about what other people think of you!

My response to accusations about caring what other people think: So what?
Yes, you heard me right. So What? What devine herald declared caring what other people think to be incompatible with free thinking and individuality? Confusing? Let me attempt to make sense of it all.

First let’s tackle the idea of a person so independent they they never under any circumstances care what other people think of them. Some people might call such a person the ideal individual, I would call them dead. Metaphorically? No, I mean literally, because post mortem is probably the only time any human being can truly claim to absolutely not care about what others think. We can all pretend that it is true, but realistically it is one of those ideals we can all strive for but never quite reach. Besides which it would be biologically impossible unless you suffer from a very severe form of autism, or Klüver-Bucy syndrome, or some neuro-chemical disfunction of a similar ilk.

Next let’s ask a simpler question: Would you want to be so completely cut off from humanity that you never care? Just because something can be achived or done, should it be? More importantly, do YOU want it to be? If we don’t ask ourselves these questions then there is no thinking involved in our decisions, and a million human follies of the past can be ascribed to not having asked this same question. It is crucial that we take this thought experiment of the ideal individualism and ask what its purpose is. What do you want to achieve by being so “individual”? Is it fame and fortune? Can’t be, because those are simply ways to be more integrated with what people think of you and being more dependent on outside forces. Do you want to achive some technological marvel? Great, but wouldn’t that be for the benefit of more people? Do you want to achive some artistic excellence, in art, in literature, in music? Excellent idea once again, but what would be the point if your masterpiece were never seen, read, or heard by anyone else? We come back down to other people once again.

Last but not the least, let’s talk about the incompatibility of free thinking individuality and religious rigidity. If I want to be free thinker, do I really want to subscribe to some predetermined code of individualism? Does it make any rational sense to try to fit into the preconcieved requirements of individuality as ascribed by some authorotative club of people who have officially deemed themselves to be individualists of the higher order? “You’re not a free thinker unless you listen to and follow what I and/or so-and-so authority figure says!” That doesn’t make much sense. Not only is it counter-intuitive but it puts the moron back into the oxymoronic.

Individuality and free thinking may not be compatible with religious rigidity and conformity, but they are still perfectly compatible with regular human discourse, learning from other people’s experiences, and caring what other people think. What is incompatible with free thinking is if you not only cared what other people thought, but proceeded to change everything about yourself to conform to their expectations. That is conformity, and confromity is not the same as creative compassion. If you get to the point where you are so scared of caring what other people think that you are unwilling to listen to another viewpoint and take from it what you wish, then you have reached a stage where creative compassion is beyond your means and part of what makes you more than a purely instinctive animal has been lost.

That’s certainly not something a creative person can afford to do, because creativity isolated from function, intent, purpose, and ultimate audience, is random chaos. When I write an article on this blog, I can’t claim that I don’t care what people think about it. I obviously do since this site is publicly accessible and there’s a comment form at the bottom that lets them say what they want about my work. If I absolutely didn’t care, I would scribble these musings in a tattered old diary, you would be none the wiser about what I think, and one day the precious sheets of my thoughts would be recycled to make throw-away paper coffee cups.

So, by its very existence this site proves that I care what other people think, because I think, and therefore I value thinking even if it is not exclusively mine. In a similar vein by its very nature commenting on a blog indicates that you care what the writer (other person) thinks, by watching a movie you are caring about what other people think, by reading a book you are caring about what other people think. Ayn Rand was a human person too, caring what other people think is an irrefutable truth of being a human being, and an absolute necessity for being a creatively thinking one.

Samir

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged top the list of the books people have recommended I read over the years. These are no idle recommendations. Almost every person I consider a dear and close friend has at some point told me very specifically that I must read these books by Ayn Rand. They have all gone so far as to say that I am perfect for these books and these books are perfect for me. Usually these recommendations have followed some impassioned monologue on my part about life, work, passion, and the virtue of being good at what you do and doing it well. I’m usually the quiet type, but in the right circumstances and in the right company, I have been know to break my silence for heart-felt tirades that get my friends to recommend Ayn Rand books and my acquaintances to shrink carefully away for fear that I might start hurling heavy objects in their direction. For the record, I have never hurled heavy objects on any occasion other than when forced to lob shot puts in school, and I have never gotten around to reading a book by Ayn Rand.

I’m as obsessed with reading as you can get. It’s true that in recent years my reading habits have been sporadic for lack of time, but I am one of those people who can and will read anything and everything, if for no other reason than to have experienced it once first hand. After all the recommendations from the few people in the world who know me best, needless to say I’m quite enthusiastic about the prospect of reading The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged and many of the Rand’s lesser know work. But, I know better than anyone else that there is a right time and a place for any book to be read, and I’ve still never got the feeling that I’m in that right time and place.

I speak from plenty of experience in this matter, because I have a large repertoire of books which I have started reading more than a handful of times and have never finished, often giving up after a few chapters. Are these simply bad books? No, I can safely say my gut feelings about books before I buy them have always been right, and I can’t remember a single one of my buys which I would consider to have been a bad book. Sometimes you’re just not ready for a particular book, and I have had phenomenal pleasure finally reading books I might have picked up more than a decade ago. I expect something similar to be the case with the works of Ayn Rand some day.

One aspect that holds me back at the moment is that Ayn Rand, like all good thinkers of the past has currently been reduced to a religion. Creativity, individuality, strong-willed single-minded fervour, all things I support, and I get the feeling they would be well reviewed in any book by Ayn Rand. But Ayn Rand’s philosophy of life has been reduced to an -ism: objectivism. Where begins the categorisation of free thinking ends any semblance of freedom, and ends most of the actual thinking.

Creativity is humanity’s greatest gift and religion its greatest obstacle — I don’t mean a religion or movement in particular, and I certainly don’t mean faith, but rather the very mental construct that is religious thought. Unfortunately religious thought is much more all pervasive than the minute arena of organised religion. People are religious about their sports, they are religious about their politics, they are religions about their ideas, they are religious about their view of the world, they are religious about their brand of dish washing liquid. In this chaotic milieu of frivolous certainties, it seems ironic that someone whose work was the ultimate counter argument to such behaviour is now packaged in similar garb.

Am I being religious in my certainty about what has become of Ayn Rand? Perhaps. After all, I have never read her work, but what pervades is the impression of her work and that seems clouded in movements, societies and supporters, critics and criticisms. The two teams are on the field and they will kick around the dead goat of Ayn Rand books and Ayn Rand quotes until all their feet are bloodied in a uniform crimson and the object of their affections has decomposed into the Earth.

Does this actually affect my reading of an Ayn Rand book? Possibly, if these thoughts and arguments are forever hanging over the act and are acting as a lens through which I shall perceive it. On the other hand it is perfectly possible to read a much debated work and get out of it something unique and something untouched by mob emotions.

Sometimes the timing just isn’t right and I await the fortuitous hour. I have written before about the positive aspects of delay in some situations, and maybe this is an example of me not wanting to approach this the wrong way for fear of missing the point in the noise. Creative ideas and creative thought often work that way. While those of us in creative professions train ourselves to function on demand to a large extent, there still remains that small element of chance and timing that truly takes things to new creative heights.

The acceptance and imbibing of new ideas is the same. We can choose to study them and absorb them on demand but sometimes we are not quite ready for the knowledge, and sometimes the knowledge is not quite ready for us.

I wrote this piece because I have been thinking anew of Ayn Rand and her work in recent months. Something has stirred and I am beginning to get the vague feeling that the time to partake in Ms. Rand’s thoughts draws near. It is nothing tangible, of course, just the instinctual feelings of the animal that perceives the coming of the distant rain and prepares for its arrival. I look forward to the experience, but I also mourn the loss of that enthusiasm I always engender in friends when they asked me if I had ever read The Fountainhead or Atlas Shrugged and I say no. Their eyes light up and their love for the ideas they absorbed from the books pours forth and suddenly I am not alone in my impassioned tirades. When the time does come for me to sit down and become one of those who has read an Ayn Rand book, most of all I will miss that feeling.

Samir

“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.”

— Ayn Rand

By all measures, you would consider me to be someone involved in the creative pursuits. I am also a writer and commentator on many things, both on this blog and off. So I do not broach the subject of originality lightly.

The long surviving myth of originality and the stupidity of most criticism as petty fault-finding came up again recently, when Vishal pointed me to yet another meticulously researched site documenting where every popular Hindi song was “lifted” from. The question that once again came to mind was: Is any music truly original?

Don’t get me wrong, there are obviously plenty of blatant copy-cats in every creative field who do not even attempt to camouflage their use of pre-existing material with the sembalance of innovation, but to call someone a creative thief is largely a value judgement that is rarely a measure of intent, and is not anything as dramatic as truth or fact. How is it ok for me to use old photos in my designs, or redo Shakespeare, but it’s not ok for someone to recreate a new tune with slightly different instrumentation? I use public domain images all the time in my work and so does everyone else. We constantly refer to popular culture and collective stories and memories. Does that mean that we are all, each and every one of us, creatively barren?

Does creativity truly mean coming up completely new patterns of thought and expression? If that is so, define “new”. Also, name one new and completely uninspired thought you or anyone else has ever had that had no precedent in nature or human history. If such a miracle would ever occur, it would mean the idea would have to have entered the creator’s mind from without, free from the common conduits of the senses or any other biological means. This would be tantamount to divine intervention. Would that idea be yours to claim, considering it was given to you?

The philosophical conundrum of originality is complex and stems from a very Greco-Roman legacy of thinking, which has purported the fallacy that there is some sacred individual ownership of thought and ideas. If you look back at other cultures, this possesiveness of thought is not as apparent. People have common stories and common memories. When knowledge is passed down through the generations aurally and through public art forms, the individual does not have the luxury of supposing that owning the book or the written notes on a subject somehow result in ownership of the concept itself. People do come up with new ideas in as much they spot connections in the things they sense around them. The building blocks are very much external, and the day someone comes up with a completely new and unsensed building block on which to base a new work, humanity will have finally done its first piece of original thinking.

Beyond this disease of labeling the innovative as original, what is more worrying is the glorification of commentary. We live in an age when the transmission of ideas is less restricted than it ever has been. While this opens up the floodgates of creative expression, it also clears the field for more confident commentary and criticism. Commentary is not a bad thing, and I welcome its educational and mind-changing value. But commentary appears to now be equated to a creative act. To clear things up once and for all, most of the time, it is not.

While it is true that some great thinkers do manage to raise the level of their criticisms to an artform, commentary by a critic on the lack of originality in a work is not just ironic but completely ridiculous, considering their art form depends for its content, structure, and thrust, on someone else’s work. Does the critic then “lift” his material from things he dispises? It would seem so.

Commentary as thought, education, and discussion is vital. Commentary masquerading as such gradiose things as justice, policing, judgements of originality, and straight out irrelevant mud-slinging is a festering disease in the minds of those many unfortunates who shall never create on their own, for lack of talent, tenacity, or both. If we are all such believers in originality, when did parasitism become a creative act?

On New Year’s eve, I was at the Festival City mall in Dubai. There was revelry in the cold winter air and good cheer amongst the hundreds who had chosen to bring in the New Year in the outdoor areas of that complex, on the banks of the creek. After staring into the distant glimmer of fireworks that exploded over the city at the stroke of midnight, we walked along the little canal that is woven into the promenade, by the many busy restaurants there. We found a new sight to greet us at the central area outside the main atrium. There, next to the water of the canal, was a beautiful fountain bathed in light and colour. Its million spinnerets wove a fleeting web of water that clung longingly to the night air before falling to the Earth, and all of them danced to the tune of music that filled the air. A hundred dazzled pairs of eyes looked on in amazement. I was one of them. Then the fountain went quiet and as it sprang back into colour, the Swan’s Theme from Tchaikovsky’s Swan Lake swelled through the gathering.

For some reason I was never particularly fond of Tchaikovsky’s Dance of the Swans, the piece’s original title. Not that I hated it, mind you, but I felt for it with the same sense of distance as I felt for all the other classical music that crossed my path. Perhaps it was all because of Star Wars. I can’t be sure now whether I was exposed to the music of Swan lake or the wonders of Star Wars first as a child, but it was the latter that did have a great impact on me. I never wore any costumes, learnt any alien tongues, or joined any cults, but the mythos of those films were an important part of my education in the possibilities of creation. The music in those movies was as important as their visual presence, and John Williams’s score contained a melancholy refrain that was used in scene transitions what was quite likely inspired by Tchaikovsky’s composition. For those who know the piece of music I’m talking about, you will remember that there was a silent tragedy to that piece, a sense of great times past that shall never return, and a sense of dread for the chaos to come. Perhaps it was that subconsciously connection that put me off Tchaikovsky. I will never know.

But as I stood before the ethereal glow of the musical fountain that night, as the music swelled, the waters erupted with a million hues, and the huddled people looked on in awe at the spectacle, I heard something I had never heard before. I was riveted not so much by the dancing streams of red, and green, and yellow, but by what they danced to. I danced with them for the first time, to a piece of music I had heard hundreds of times before. It’s one thing to know a piece of music, but a whole lot more powerful to understand it. I understood the Swan’s Theme that day, its nuances of emotion, its grandness of scale, it’s subtleties of movement. Ask me now exactly what I felt in retrospect, and I might not be able to describe it with clarity, but what is important is that I understood it then, in the moment, completely.

That spontaneous and almost prescient awareness of someone else’s point of view is what true compassion is. For what is any work of art if not a little crystallised mote of human emotion and thought, uprooted and externalised by the artist for all to feel? Compassion is not a cold post mortem dissection of facts and statements, it is a deep animal feeling with the rawness and strength of the entire spectrum of our emotions at its fingertips.

Put yourself in other people’s shoes. It’s good for you as a human being and even better for you as a creative person. If you could come up with 10 ideas thinking like yourself, image how many more ideas you could conjure up thinking like each of the 6 billion other souls out there. Everyone has a unique personality and a unique pont of view. Live it, breathe it, and use what you have learnt in the process.

There are ways to encourage this experience of compassion and they are present, if not apparent, in my story with the musical fountain.

1] Change the context

I saw things differently because I was introduced to the Dance of the Swans in a completely different and unfamiliar context for the first time. In the past I might have come across it in movies, or the odd televised ballet recital, but never quite like this. In this case the change of environment was a coincidence, but there is nothing stopping you from forcing this change when you need to understand something in more depth. Look around, be receptive, and you will find a way.

2] Change the medium

You might see a ballet in some badly shot video of a stage taken from a distance, or you might hear a tune as an ironic choice of music in a Tom & Jerry cartoon. I never saw a live performance of Swan Lake, so I don’t know if that medium would have had a different effect on me. We all respond to different stimuli under different circumstances. Some of us are very visual, some aural, and yet others are more sensitive to touch. As you ask questions of yourself and challenge yourself with new summits to conquer you will be the best judge of your strengths and weaknesses in these matters. Use what you know and let the material or situation be presented to your mind in the most suitable form. For me and Swan Lake, it would seem that was the shimmering and every changing colours of a water fountain. Now this has made me quite curious to see the balletic performance at some point.

3] Change the attitude

Finally it all comes down to our internal environment, our moods, our attitudes. That is what finally decides our reactions to things, and perhaps a happy, celebratory mood is essential to compassion. Many see empathy in a melancholy light. To be compassionate seems to have become an act filled with pathos. Why? To feel is human. To share what another feels or thinks is the ultimate celebration of being human. Why would you choose to celebrate with sadness? You could boil this down to saying that being compassionate to both people and ideas requires a positive attitude, but that’s business talk and I’m trying to illustrate a human experience. To be truly understanding and compassionate requires a certain level of internal happiness. It is in this state that our hearts are the most open and our minds the most free to what there is to be felt.

Compassion is one of the strangest of our human traits. So powerful and instinctual is its effect on our psyche that most of us either choose to over-indulge in its pathos, or we completely sanitize ourselves from compassion’s pull. Moderation is key here, as in many others aspects of the human condition. Compassion is not only an essential of your humanity, but it is also at the very core of your creativity. Perhaps that is because we have not yet recognised that creativity and humanity are one and the same, and compassion is simply their active element.

Samir

This article is in response to an invitation by Isabella Mori to participate in a group writing competition on the topic of compassion organised by The Middle Way, Zen-Inspired Self Development, and UrbanMonk.Net

At its heart, procrastination is a delaying tactic used by your very clever self to avoid doing something that you need to do. The reasons can be many — fear, a lack of confidence, a failing of courage, or good old laziness, are all equally common motivators for this habit. What this delaying tactic leads to is the passage of time, and in your modern, hurried existence, you automatically assume that any passage of time implies a waste of it. That is not always true. Time can have many effects on you and your life, and not all those effects involve painful botox injections or expensive cosmetic surgery. Some of those effects can be of immense benefit, and the wisdom that comes with time makes a moderate and creative sort of procrastination a very healthy thing for:

1. Making the right decisions
2. Doing things well
3. Executing with purpose

1] Making the right decisions

Let things simmer, because things always change and your mind is no different.

If you always did everything immediately without any delay or stalling, there would be a lot more to regret in the world. It is usually a very simple matter for me or you to come to the conclusion, or make the decision that something is to be done. That is the point when the dreaded procrastination bug kicks in and we delay like there’s no tomorrow. The silver lining to this can be that it gives us time to reconsider our decisions. You will find that it is not uncommon for you to reconsider something you had decided to do, given the time to reconsider. If you procrastinate a little, you can make sure that the second thoughts you have are in time rather than in hind sight.

When I have a particularly troublesome message to send someone, or a major decision to make, I will often try and stall the final execution of it. You might have heard the advice of many to “sleep over it”, and that advice can save you a lot of trouble. Whenever I have to send out a tricky email to a client which says anything more controversial than “You’re the greatest!,” I sometimes write it promptly, but read it again the next day before I send it out. Second thoughts can be a useful filter for bad decisions and sending out the wrong messages, both literally and metaphorically. Doing something a little late is usually better that doing the wrong thing.

2] Doing things well

Stitching in time is all well and good, but sometimes it’s better to wait till you have the right colour of thread.

Speed and promptness will never guarantee the quality of what you accomplish. While this thought can lead you into a never ending search for impossible perfection, I am not advocating any extreme procrastination here, just some moderate delaying. What you should be waiting for is not the perfect execution of your task, but rather the proper execution of it within a reasonable time frame. Hurrying into things for the sake of completion can lead to a lot of damage, which you will have to undo, while delaying it too far can make any action worthless.

This quandary between speed and thoroughness is something I always wrestle with when it comes to cleaning my home. On the one hand, I could be mechanical about it and do the regular maintenance routine that most people swear by. Or, I could be less regular about it but do it really well. The common wisdom is that the minor maintenance in tasks such as this keeps your burden light, but it could also be true that your light but regular cleaning prompts you to do the bare minimum required to maintain the semblance of cleanliness. The same holds true for any task. Doing things quickly and regularly takes less time, but doing something well takes more time, and that cannot be done quickly and regularly. A bit of procrastination can be instrumental in finding the balance between the two, because as much as you might want to believe it, constant motion is not progress.

3] Executing with purpose

Not fighting might be cowardice, but fighting without knowing what you are fighting for is stupidity.

Aimless action is impotent. Maybe you have come to the right decisions along the way about what you need to do, and maybe you have also taken your time to do it well, but that still leaves you with the question that you rarely stop to ask yourself, “What am I doing this for?” Procrastinate today and ask yourself this question, because it might be better than being diligent now and asking this of yourself later.

For many years now, I have been a freelance designer. Like most freelancers, the thought of formalizing my services under some sort of officially registered company of my own has often seemed attractive. I can honestly say I’ve been seriously procrastinating on that idea for at least a year now, and I am very thankful for the delay. Why? Because I am convinced that if I had gone through with it a year ago, my business would have been a quick and painful failure. A year ago I was very effectively deceiving myself as to why I would want a company and what I would do with it. Time has given me the luxury of self reflection, and with that has come a better understanding of what I want and don’t want to do if I take the plunge as a creative entrepreneur. No amount of diligent decision making, or education about the right way to go about it would have given me the same insights as the slow but revealing process of asking myself what I want the purpose of it all to be.

There are similar questions that you have not asked yourself yet: “Is this the right thing to do?”, “Is this the best way to do it?”, and, “Why am I doing this?” Three simple questions that can change the way you think of something, and three questions that you require time to answer. In the hurry to do, be careful not to forget what you are doing it for. And if you do not know, perhaps it is not yet time for the doing.

So once in a while, take a creative risk. Procrastinate and be great.

Samir