sehrish ch asked:
Creativity is a central source of meaning in our lives. Most of the things that are interesting, important and human are what makes us different from apes. Our language, values, scientific understanding, and artistic expression that was recognized and transmitted through learning.
Creativity is the toughest job but when we’re creative, we feel we are living more fully than during rest of life. But unfortunately in our society attitude of creative child and person is not acceptable. Creative children and people do face problems in their lives. If we study biographies of creative personalities, we come to know that they had faced great difficulties while coping with the traditional families and school systems in their childhood. Creative children usually feel frustration with the institutional attitude. They want an environment where they can be spontaneous, expressive and explore their potentials. They usually feel suffocate in the traditional systems, which result some of them to tolerate such kind of restrictive environment while others challenge their authorities and become rebel.
Many traditional parents and teachers also experience great difficulties while coping with their creative children, some parents feel guilty as parents. But in years and decades later, when these same children become successful adults and get well respect in their fields whether as scientist, artists, poets, philosophers, musicians or mystics, they get appreciation from same parents, family members and teachers for their talent and worth.
Being a parent and teacher of creative child one must be sensitive to their creative needs. These kinds of children prefer to follow the trails of their heart rather than the high ways of tradition. If their creative efforts are supportive, encouraging and appreciating, then these trails will become the high ways for the next generation.
According to the Mihaly Csikszentmilhalyi research creative children and people work long hours with an aura of freshness and enthusiasm. This does not mean that they usually always “on†hyperactive infact, they rest often and sleep a lot. Creative personalities alternate between imagination, fantasy and rooted sense of reality. Great art and great science is imagination into a world that is different from the present. The rest of society often views these new ideas, as fantasies with current reality. And they are right, but the whole point of art and science is to go beyond what we consider real and the same time.
Most of us assume that artists, musicians, writers, poets, painters are strong on the fantast side, where as scientists, business people are realists. This may be true in terms of day to day routine activities. But when a person begins to work is off.
Michaly spends ten years of her life in the research on creative people. According to her creative personalities are humble and proud at the same time and can be both rebellious and conservative. Creative people usually very passionate about their work, yet they can be extremely objective as well. Their openness and sensitivity often exposes them to suffering and pain, yet also to a great deal of enjoyment.
“Inventors have a low threshold of pain. Things bother themâ€
A badly designed machine car bother engineer, just as bad music to musician.
Dr Khalid Sohail discussed in his book “Islam of secular Humanism…A philosophical journey†about creative personalities in these words
“When we study the life stories of mystic poets we become to know that many of them led simple lives. Because of their aptitude and personalities they did not fit into the formal education systems and traditional institutions of their times. They were the students of the University of Life and learnt from their own experiences. One such example is Walt Whiteman, a mystic poet of nineteenth century, who has influenced twentieth century American literature more than any other poet. Although his poems from his collection Leaves of Grass are taught in colleges and universities all over the world, He himself did not do well in school. His teacher, Mr. Benjamin Hallech, was so disappointed with him that he told his father,
“This boy is so idle, I am sure he will never amount to anythingâ€
Whiteman’s father, agreeing with the teacher, took him out of school at age thirteen and asked him to work in a printer’s shop. Even at work he was so preoccupied in his soul searching.
But luckily, in most traditional schools there are a few exceptions. There are teachers who encourage the spontaneity of children and nurture their creativity. They support students to think outside the box and explore their independent thinking and non traditional life style. Creative students are attracted to such teachers and relatives who support their unconventional passions. Einstein was also lucky to have one such teacher in his school. Clark Ronald wrote in his book Einstein … The Life and Times “His name was Reuss. He tried to make his pupils think for themselvesâ€
Previous research has indicated that creative people use their right side of brain but according to new study creative people do think in a fundamentally different way than every one else. The study showed that creative people exhibit quite different patterns of brain activity while going about solving problems, and even just while day dreaming.
The new study led by John Kounios, professor of psychology at Drexel University and Mark Jung Beeman of North Western University compared the physiological brain activity of creative versus noncreative problem solvers. During the study, participants relaxed quietly for seven minutes while their electroencephalograms (EEGs) were recorded to show their brain activity. The participants were not given any task to perform and told they could think about whatever they wanted. Later, they were asked to solve a series of anagrams- scrambled letters that can be rearranged to form words. That can be solved by deliberately and methodically trying out different letter combinations, or they can be solved with a sudden insight in which the solution pops into awareness. Creative solvers exhibited greater activity in several regions of the right hemisphere. Right hemisphere activity occurs even during a “resting†state in those with a tendency to solve problems by creating insight. This finding suggests that even the spontaneous thought of creative individuals, such as in their daydreams, contains more remote associations.
Creative people have been in minority but that minority has been leading the majority on the journey of human evolution. Arnold Toynbee, a famous historian, once wrote, “To give a fair chance to potential creativity is a matter of life and death of any society. This is important because the outstanding creative ability of a smaller percentage of the population is mankind’s ultimate capital assetâ€
Sehrish chauhdary