Lake in Medicine Bow Mountains, Wyoming
6" x 9"
Watercolor study
How do we grow, flourish, and be creative in a culture dominated with the digital world and a hurried pace? How does one chart a course to inner thriving that results in a life flowing with vibrant, intentional impact on one's world?
A number of actions can be taken to encourage being more imaginative in your living. Studies abound in showing that exercise helps, so think of it as taking your imagination for a walk. It stimulates your whole being. Ian McEwan wrote that "the rhythm of walking is very amenable to the rhythm of thinking." When you are healthy, you are not limited by physical issues to compete with the ability to imagine. The Greek Herophilies understood this way back in 300 B.C.:
When health is absent
Wisdom cannot reveal itself,
Art cannot become manifest,
Strength cannot be exerted,
Wealth is useless, and
Reason is powerless.
Another action to help fuel your imagination is to capture your thoughts and ideas in a journal or notebook. This creates a little storehouse or seedbed for ideas to germinate.
Manhattan skyline, May 2013
A third action that I want to highlight is READING. I start with this quote by Atwood Townsend: "No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender to self-chosen ignorance." Words nurture creativity. The very activity of the mind in decoding words from a book fuels creativity and imagination. And I am going to make a distinction here between what happens when you read in a book versus the Internet. Leslie Yarbrough, in her article "Why Reading Makes You More Creative" describes it well in what neuroscience has proven in research:
the problem isn't so much that we don't read, it's that we spend our time reading blogs, tweets, magazines, and other short form snippets. This is great for consuming lots of information and staying up to date, but it does not work our brains the same way as a book, which is an activity that forces the reader to ditch the distractions and focus. It's this focus that acts as a catalyst for the many perks that come from reading books, not the least of which is an increase in creativity.
Deep,sustained thought that follows an author's logic through a book flexes your mind muscles in ways that skim reading over the Internet can't.
Times Square, May 2013
Steve Leveen in his book, The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life, cites that "many of the most engaged and interesting people in history seem to have been swept up into a whirling dance, laughing with life, one arm crooked into experience and the other into books". Wouldn't you like that to be a description of your life?! Mr. Leveen goes on to say that "living your well-read life is a way of living higher, with your eyes open to an astonishing world and your mind daily learning more ---about the world, yourself, and your untapped capabilities".
So much more could be written about the value of reading well and deeply, but I'll close with this beautiful, descriptive quote about a book's value by Carl Sagan:
What an astonishing thing a book is.
It's a flat object made from a tree with flexible parts on which are
imprinted many funny dark squiggles.
But one glance at it and you're inside the mind of another person,
maybe somebody dead for thousands of years.
Across the millenia,
an author is speaking clearly and silently inside your head,
directly to you.
Writing is perhaps the greatest of human inventions,
binding together people who never knew each other,
citizens of different epochs.
Books break the shackles of time.
A book is proof that humans are capable of working magic.
Here's a question for you from The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life: Are you reading something great right now?
Bridal Veil Falls, British Columbia
Live bravely and beautifully!
