FINDING A NEW KIND OF CREATIVITY
I recently drove from Seattle out to the desert. It’s a long drive across mountain passes, vast stretches of open fields and small scattered towns. After months of feeling like a dog being crate trained, driving across the open, expansive country side felt exhilarating.
I was on a highway somewhere in Idaho when I passed a cattle truck, the kind with live animals being transported in small compartments, its metal walls dappled with round airholes. I guess they’re being crate trained too. Usually I pass one of those and no one is home. Once in a while, I can tell I’ll have company based on the smell that hits my air vents as I approach. Look kids, cows in crates. This time though, I didn’t even make it alongside the truck before I was saluted by a bushy white muzzle pushing through one of the holes, followed by a long, lapping pink tongue. It was pouring down rain, and the thirsty cow was getting a drink.
I looked at the cow with startled delight. In all of the many cross-country trips I’ve taken, most in my youth before I had the power to object, I have never seen an animal do this. I felt sad for the cow that she was so thirsty she would shove her face into an uncomfortable position to get a drink. I felt proud of her for finding an elegant solution to her problem. And a little bit of awe at how long her pink tongue was and just how far it could reach.
It was probably just 15 seconds that the cow was within my view and then the truck was behind me, cruising the slow lane. The cow stayed on my mind the rest of the drive. Beyond my surprise and amusement, there was also a sense of affinity. I see you, thirsty bovine, and I feel the same. In the last three months, the COVID-19 pandemic has turned many of my paradigms on their head. There’s very little of my former routines and experiences that I can take for granted now. I’ve met with so many obstacles and unexpected constraints. And like the thirsty cow, I’ve tapped into a different kind of creativity to find my way through many of these obstacles, seeking joy amidst the fear and uncertainty.
Most of the creative problem solving I’d done up to now involved some business process or new compliance measure. I’d huddle with my colleagues, brainstorming stickies in hand, fervently mapping out the current state. Finding the solution was somewhat satisfying, but rarely very impactful to me personally, and didn’t involve that much creativity.
Problem solving for the new obstacles the pandemic has created in my personal life has been a whole new experience. For example, my son’s 9th birthday was at the end of March. He was supposed to have a party with his friends at the WhirleyBall center. WhirleyBall being an offbeat sport where little boys can bash each other with bumper cars while making baskets with lacrosse sticks. It was going to be a fun party. That is, until the shelter in place order shut down all of our plans. How was I going to celebrate this sad little boy
who was missing school and his friends? The creative solution: mobilize the party van. I decorated our car and wrote “Birthday Boy” and “Honk, it’s my Birthday” on the windows. I called all the parents and told them we were making a circuit to visit everyone’s driveways. We drove around the neighborhood blaring music and stopping at each friend’s driveway to visit safely from our car windows. For many kids, it was their first time seeing a friend in weeks. It wasn’t WhirleyBall level fun, but my son did feel celebrated and I definitely felt relieved. I had found a solution to this unexpected problem.
I’ve found a number of other creative ways to meet my family’s needs in the past few months. I set up a home office next to the bunk beds in my daughter’s room. It works ok as long as the laptop camera doesn’t get the dolls or the fuzzy pink chair in the background! To break the monotony and celebrate the weekend, we have Friday pizza parties with a dress up theme. My least favorite was when my daughter insisted I wear a formal gown to eat pizza in the living room. In place of the spring break trip we couldn’t take, we
rented a house on the beach nearby and spent a weekend mucking in tide pools and roasting marshmallows over a fire pit.
Facing so many unexpected obstacles has pushed me to find a kind of creativity that I wasn’t really aware I had. Hmm. I can actually manage this. I can take a whole list of new constraints and craft a solution that
leaves everyone smiling. Instead of admiring the mounting number of problems, I can pull my chin up and come up with something totally new. It’s a creativity born of necessity, and it’s surprisingly satisfying. It tells me that I am capable and I can handle what gets thrown at me. And I can do it in a shiny,
dated cocktail gown.
I’ve also started to reflect on my pre-pandemic attitudes. Some of the problems I had then seem so small now. Heck, most days I would trade my new ones for those old ones. Yet I had often sat and admired those
old problems and felt too stuck to do much about them. The difference? The problems got bigger, the stakes got higher, and my resolve strengthened. And hopefully, I’ve learned something lasting about a different kind of creativity, one that you find when you’re just not willing to go without what you really
need, and you find a new way to get it.
What is the most creative solution you’ve come up with in the past few months? How did that experience shift your perspective? How can the new perspective inform other problems that need solving? A coach can be a
great partner as you solve for the present and plan for the future. Contact me to learn more about what
coaching can do for you.
