When I was a freshman in college, my roommate and I were in different English classes, and his professor was big on having them write creative essays. You understand that, for nerdy engineering students, that was no small assignment. Most of us had the creativity of a slug.
In Gary’s (not his real name) case, one of the first assignments he got was to write an essay on the sex life of a bowling ball. Gary had a perverse sense of humor, so for him, this was an ideal assignment, and he went after it like a dog chasing a stray cat.
I no longer remember his essay, but it was pretty funny. However, I never forgot the title of that essay, and that was in 1959. Remembering something from 62 years ago is pretty incredible for me, but it has made me think about creativity and how it can enrich our lives.
I am a fan of trying to live creatively. What that means for me is not necessarily being artistic or an inventor, but simply trying to think of new and interesting ways to deal with the important things in my life.
Let’s take marriage, as an example of what I mean. I was married for 38 years before my wife died of kidney failure. If you’ve been married for more than 10 years, there is a good chance that your relationship with your spouse has become comfortable enough that you no longer engage in the kind of behavior toward him/her that you did when you were dating.
But something Dr. Steve Covey wrote about also stuck with me. A man approached him and explained that he was no longer in love with his wife after 20 years of marriage, and he wanted to know what Covey would suggest. Covey surprised him by saying, “Just love her.”
The man protested that he had just told Dr. Covey he didn’t love her, so how was he supposed to do that.
“You’re mistaking love for emotion,” Covey said. “How did you treat her when you met her?” The man had to admit that he had pursued her and treated her like a person on a pedestal, and that by contrast he now treated her pretty badly.
There is a principle in psychology that we infer our feelings about someone else by how we treat them. That being the case, if you want to revive the love you once felt for someone, start treating them as-if you love them and you most likely will find yourself doing so. This assumes that you want to give it a try. Otherwise, you go for divorce.
The point of this, however, is that finding creative ways to show someone you care about them in one way to live creatively. Another would be to find interesting and unusual ways to engage in outings or other fun activities. And if you want to get buy-in, make the creative thinking a group brainstorming activity, following the rule that no evaluation takes place until after the ideas have been generated.
In today’s busy, hurry-up world, finding ways to live creatively can get you out of a rut and reenergize you. Give it a try. You’ll be glad you did. And think about the sex life of a bowling ball as a stimulus for thinking of real-life possibilities.
