Youth and Experience

I've been thinking a fair amount about last class - the illustration from the board and the discussion around it. I really liked that idea of the two elements, youth and experience, being necessary to achieve best creative potential. There is so much to be gained from each...the innocence, courage, exuberance, inquisitiveness, etc. of our childhoods and the wisdom, work ethic, skill, exposure to other influences, the amalgam of trials and triumphs that make us better problem solvers, etc. of our experience. All these things can be and should be a part of anything we create. We're not really complete or optimum creative beings without both elements - a yin/yang-type principle.

I made the comment in class that this makes sense when you consider some people that you may know. I was thinking about people I've met and some I know quite well who are out of balance in that they haven't really 'grown up.' They have strong creative genius, but they don't have the skills to harness it, and you can see that they'll likely never live up to their creative potential until they develop those skills. It's interesting because for a while, there was a pop psychology movement about the concept of finding the inner/repressed child that was sometimes taken too far. I guess I just always find it reassuring when I'm reminded of the wisdom of balance and moderation.

I know, too, that there are many people (and perhaps society as a whole) who are out of balance in the opposite way...they are much too 'adult' and don't know how to have fun, to let go, to trust, to giggle. In my musings since class, I've been wondering if that's not my common way of becoming unbalanced. I remember my own father telling me (when I was in jr. high) to "lighten up, for Pete's sake!" I'm glad he told me that then because in some ways, I have lightened up since then, but I know that tendency in myself. I've even been considering my personal creativity plan that we handed in earlier in the course. If I think back on it, I can't remember any balance in that. It was fairly rigid/structured and focussed on the work of creativity, not really the playful fun of it, at least not until I had all the 'adult' stuff done.

We learn specific things from specific stages in our lives; moving on shouldn't mean abandoning those lessons we gained in our youth and innocence.