During my last year of university I took a class in the faculty of Psychology called: Psychology of Creativity. It was actually one of my best courses ever. It was based on the activation on our right brain hemisphere through breathing exercises, creative writing, poetry, painting and music. I took the course as one of the first steps I was giving to develop creativity in my life.
After I graduated from the university, I was working in Human Resources in my home country (Ecuador), delivering training to the employees of the company I was working for. In my trainings I tried to be very dynamic and interactive, for I would get the participants on their feet, to move, play, create, reenergize and laugh. At first, I always found resistance in them, either because they didn’t want to get out of their comfort zone or because they didn’t want to feel ridiculous. However, once they started the activity and got involved in it they didn’t want to stop and they showed a great sense of engagement in each game. I was really surprised of all the things they could create when they committed to the activities.
Every time I saw these adults becoming like children I reflected on how beautiful childhood is. It is a never ending game, where our imagination has no limitations and determines how we live our days. We actually have that capacity to play for hours without getting tired, and more importantly, it is through play that we develop our creativity, values and relationships with others. Also, as children, we are not afraid to make mistakes. If we are wrong, we find a creative solution to solve the problem.
At the same time, I felt sad because we step out of this beautiful age so quickly and our creativity and capacity to play tend to go inactive as we grow up, as if they were bad and we tried to punish them. So, I came up with two questions: Why did we decide to punish our capacity to create? And, at what point of our lives did we decide to numb it?
What do you think?
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