Three exercises in seeing things differently
“It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.”
— Henry David Thoreau
Creativity is a skill. One of the most important skills in a world where almost any information is only a search box away and where billions of calculations per second can be done by an average laptop computer. I have seen that many people equate creativity with only certain disciplines and professions, e.g. with singers, painters, and authors. However, we are entering a brave new world. A world where creativity remains one of the few human skills which are difficult for machines to replicate or replace. At least for some time.
Personally, I feel that there are three super-skills which a person in any occupation in life should develop. A couple of them are learning and empathy. More on them some other time. The third one is creativity. Let’s talk about that. I want to share with you three exercises that I have found to be very effective in developing creativity. All three exercises have to do with seeing things differently. You know the famous Apple advertising slogan of “Think different.” I will urge you to “See different” first. That will help you to then think differently.
See from different angles
Once there was a Zen monk and his pupil. One morning the master took his pupil to a small pond in which a koi fish was swimming. The master asked, “Atisa, how many ponds do you see?” The pupil, Atisa replied, “Why master there is only one pond.” The master looked at his pupil and said, “Hmm. Don’t you think that you might be viewing the pond differently from how I am viewing it? You might be seeing the water to be more bluish, while I might be finding it more greenish.” Atisa was thoughtful. He acknowledged, “Yes master. There are two ponds.” The master smiled at his pupil’s reply. He said, “Well, now you are learning to see two ponds. However, have you thought about the koi swimming in the pond. Don’t you think that for the koi, its perception of water and the pond would be different? So, I ask you again. How many ponds do you see?” Atisa thought for a while this time. Finally, he replied, “So, there are three ponds. I mean, three ponds that you, I and the koi see. If there are more beings, there could be more ponds, but for now since I don’t find anyone else, my final answer is that there are three ponds.” The master laughed at this and said, “What about the pond that exists without anyone of us being there? What about the pond as it is?”
While this story has a beautiful insight for spirituality, we will maintain our focus on the material world for now. One sure way of being more creative is to learn to see the world from other points of view. There are some outstanding pieces of creative work based on seeing the world from other beings view point. In fact, it is not just limited to other people, but include other living beings and even inanimate things. A few that immediately come to my mind are:
- Avatar, a 2009 film by James Cameron, in which Jake Sully, a disabled former Marine becomes a part of the Avatar Program after his twin brother is killed. The movie is a beautiful depiction of how Jake begins being an avatar of a Na’vi, starts seeing the world from their viewpoint and finally (spoiler alert!) is permanently transferred to his avatar.
- Black Beauty, an 1877 novel by Anna Sewell, is written as an autobiography of a horse. We hear the worldview of Black Beauty through moving lines such as, “…there is no religion without love, and people may talk as much as they like about their religion, but if it does not teach them to be good and kind to man and beast, it is all a sham…”
- Flatland, an 1884 novella by Edwin Abott Abott, is narrated by Square in a two-dimensional world occupied by geometric figures, where women are simple line-segments, while men are polygons with various numbers of sides. Square is awakened to the possibility of more dimensions of reality by Sphere.
Use the macro lens
Once there was a famous writer and her assistant. The assistant had an amazing command on language and used to help the writer in editing her work. She wanted to become a writer herself but struggled to find something original to write about. She shared this problem with the writer, “Ma’am, you know that I can write rather well, but I want to learn from you on how to write something original.” The writer smiled at her and said, “Nafisa, you know the famous museum in our city. Tomorrow morning, you go to the museum and write about it.” Nafisa, went to the museum and sat on a bench in front of it. She saw the people going in. She thought about the history of the museum, it’s architecture, the paintings in it, the sculptures in it and everything else about the museum that came to her mind. It had all been written about. Multiple times. What original piece could she write about such a famous museum? She was frustrated. She returned in the evening and shared her agony with the writer.
The writer heard Nafisa and said, “Well, tomorrow why don’t you focus on just the external design of the museum and write about it?” Nafisa went again to the museum the next day. She saw the layout, the passages, the arches, the columns, the colors and the lighting. However, it still seemed difficult to write something original. So, she returned in the evening and shared her frustration again.
The writer told her, “Nafisa, tomorrow you just focus on the columns in the museum. In fact, go close to the columns, see the motifs on them and write about it.” Next day, Nafisa did precisely that. She saw some wonderful plant motifs on the columns. She made notes about their patterns and colors. She decided to research about the art influences behind those motifs, how old were the origins of those influences and how much they persisted today. She wrote a remarkable piece. She knew now how to be original by applying the macro lens to how she viewed things.
This story illustrates how viewing things from very close quarters can trigger original thinking. Of course, we are all aware of stunning macro photography, even if we are not much into doing photography ourselves. I have found that taking a similar macro view in other arts and sciences is immensely helpful in being more creative. Here are a couple of examples that come to my mind from fields outside of photography:
- The Old Guitarist, is an oil painting by Pablo Picasso created in late 1903 and early 1904. By creating monochromatic color scheme with flat, two-dimensional forms, Picasso dissociated the character from space and time and brought him closer to how we view him. Picasso went on to find Cubism, which also combines our first exercise of looking at a subject from a multitude of viewpoints instead of just one.
- Grameen Bank was founded by Professor Muhammad Yunus in 1976. It is a microfinance organization and community development bank in Bangladesh. It makes small loans to the impoverished without requiring collateral. Professor Yunus found the need for such a bank by using the macro lens, what he called as seeing poverty from a worm-eye view.
“When you look from a bird-eye view, you see too many things, but not too detailed. I looked from the worm-eye view, just as a worm crawling on the ground. Being a professor, if I try to see things from bird-eye view, I would have written a paper about it, but I see poverty in a worm-eye view, those people suffering are my neighbours. So instead of writing a paper, I thought how to be helpful to them. ”
— Professor Muhammad Yunus
Switch off your focus
“Three Act Tragedy” is a work of detective fiction by British writer Agatha Christie. The book features Hercule Poirot, the renowned Belgian detective, a fictional character created by Christie. In the story, when a vicar chokes to death on a cocktail while attending a party held by actor Sir Charles Cartwright, Poirot initially dismisses the idea of murder but reconsiders when another guest dies in the same manner. With the help of two enthusiastic amateurs — his old friend, the retired stage actor Sir Charles Cartwright, and Charles’s jaunty love interest, Miss “Egg” Lytton Gore — Poirot works to unravel a perplexing mystery.
In the second last chapter of the novel, Poirot has asked for twenty-four hours of uninterrupted time to think over the facts. However, when Egg walks in unannounced, to her amazement she finds the great detective engaged in building card houses. Her face showed such lively scorn that Poirot was impelled to defend himself. “It is not, mademoiselle, that I have become childish in my old age. No. But the building of card houses, I have always found it most stimulating to the mind.” As Egg and Poirot get into a discussion, Poirot suddenly has an epiphany. That helps him to solve the case.
Haven’t we all experienced it some time or the other? We are faced with a problem, we grapple with it focusing intently, bearing all our mental energy upon to solve the problem. Yet, sometimes the problem cannot be solved. Then, even as we are taking a bath, taking a nap or jogging around our apartment block, the answer flashes forth. Almost out of nowhere. The trick is to alternate between, what Professor Barbara Oakley calls the focused and diffused modes. In her book, “A Mind for Numbers”, Barbara provides some interesting examples of how Thomas Edison and Salvador Dali used tools and tricks to get into the diffused mode for scientific breakthroughs and artistic inspiration respectively. Perhaps everyone is aware of the anecdote of Archimedes, who has gone down in history as the guy who ran naked through the streets of Syracuse shouting “Eureka!” when he suddenly found the insight which is today known to us as Archimedes’ principle. I have a couple of other fascinating examples as follows:
- Kubla Khan, is a poem written by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, completed in 1797 and published in 1816. The poem was composed one night after Coleridge experienced an opium-influenced dream after reading a work describing Xanadu, the summer palace of the Mongol ruler and Emperor of China Kublai Khan. Upon waking, he set about writing lines of poetry that came to him from the dream.
- The Benzene Ring, is credited to German organic chemist Friedrich August Kekule. There are conflicting versions of how Kekule discovered the ring-like structure of benzene with alternating double bonds. In one version, cited by Carl Jung in ‘’The Psychology of Transference,’’ Kekule discovered the benzene ring after dreaming of ‘’the Royal Marriage,’’ the image of a dancing king and queen used by medieval alchemists as a symbol of conjunction.
So, there you have it. Three exercises in seeing different which I have found to be wonderful in helping us to be more creative.
- See from different angles — Put yourself in someone else’s shoes and try to see the world through their eyes.
- Use macro the lens — Get close to things and develop the worm-eye view to balance your bird-eye view of a problem.
- Switch off your focus — Use tools and techniques to effectively use your mind in the diffused mode, alternating with the focused mode.
