My son has a new passion: Knights. He’s four, almost five he would stress, and he wants to know everything there is to know about knights. Dragons too, and of course dinos are still important, but right now the knights are his focus.
So we bought him a Playmobil set of dragon knights and he loves it! The other day he was playing with his knights when I noticed a fire truck and an ambulance right next to his own built LEGO castle.
I asked him what they were doing there and his answer was terrific:
They were there in case one of the knights got hurt when fighting the dragon. And of course dragons spew fire, so there was every chance of something catching fire, hence the fire truck.
Now, he knows knights don’t exist anymore, that they lived a long time ago. But he hasn’t figured out that there weren’t any ambulances of fire trucks back then. He’s just being very prepared and practical, despite the anachronism.
And in doing so, he’s allowing for a lot of creativity in his play. Because when the knights get injured fighting the dragon, he can play with his ambulance and ‘heal’ them or take them to a hospital. He can also let the firemen come and extinguish fires. It’s a great thing actually.
One of the things I love about how his mind works is that it has few limitations. He happily mixes times and cultures and different kind of toys like stuffed animals and LEGO. He doesn’t know about ‘rules’ yet that prevent us grown ups from doing the same.
We don’t mix, because we know better. We know that knights and ambulances don’t go together. We know that a putting on a dragon costume and taking up a sword doesn’t make us a dragon and a knight at the same time. We don’t easily mix Playmobil and LEGO, because well, they’re two different systems of toys, aren’t they?
He doesn’t know that and it makes him far more creative and open than me. I shoot down ideas because they don’t fit into the preconceived notions I have about systems, order and what does and doesn’t match. I disregard ideas because they violate certain rules and standards. In short, my creativity is hindered by the boundaries I’ve created for it.
When Jesus said we should be more like children, I don’t think that creativity was first on His mind, but nevertheless, I do think that those who are creative (and we have seen many, many inspiring examples of creativity here on Churchmag!) are far more in touch with their inner child than others.
If we want to be creative, to be truly out-of-the-box creative, than we need to be like my son. Let go of limitations, notions, rules and systems. Go with ‘what if…’ and see where it takes you. I’m thinking knights, dragons and ambulances, how about you?
Do you feel like you hinder your own creativity?
What could you do to become more free in your creative thinking?
rcarmstrong says
Rachel,
Thanks so much for your post. I thoroughly enjoyed reading– and agree wholeheartedly with it. I find it to be a reoccurring struggle to be open and let go of these rules and constructs that have, in some cases, been hammered into out heads, and in others that we’ve made up in our own minds.
Maybe one of these days I’ll be successful in this endeavor. 🙂
Rachel Blom says
Thanks! I know what you mean, I try to be ‘out of the box’ but it really isn;t that easy to let go of what you know, of what is and of what is ‘accepted’. May we succeed!
Barry Dollar says
Reminds me of my days at Ai of Atlanta where my instructor would have use do 50-60 thumbnails for a design and we would have to automatically throw out the first 12. Once you hit about the 30 mark, that is when it got interesting and you were putting firetrucks with dragons. Great thought…
Rachel Blom says
Yup, sounds familiar. I’m also writing fiction and usually the first ten ideas I come up with for a story or a scene are cliché. It’s when you let go of the familiar that you come up with the interesting and creative ideas…indeed, firetrucks and dragons 🙂
Eric Dye says
I love everything about this post. 😀
Rachel Blom says
Thanks. Me too, my son especially 😉