Let us listen to children's voice

M Sadagopan *

If creativity can be defined as 'the freedom to err, and the ability to come out of the errors', children are the most creative thinkers, free from pressures, till they grow enough to fall in line with the mediocre social thinking. They just require thought leaders from the education system.

Rabindranath Tagore, in his book "CRISIS IN EDUCATION", laments: 'we teach our children geography, to rob them of their earth!' Education should be an excursion into the minds of the greats rather than a conducted sightseeing through a jail.

Creativity in children, of course, cannot be a regular class exercise in the current academic format overheated by competition. There is no adequate time in the present academic space, nor is there adequate space in every child's mind to be loaded with creativity.

When creativity is in essence, walking the extra mile, it is clearly a class initiative as opposed to a mass exercise, and cannot be expected, much less compelled, in academics, office or at homes. Nevertheless, it has to come from those who are endowed with its supply, to meet the demands of the evolving times. To ensure its incidence, there has to be the carrot of space in all spheres and roles, lest the stick of doomsday come down on the all- too- mundane.

When your columnist was lectured at school as a child, on the plight of Sudama (the mythological Lord Krishna's gurukkul mate), who had to tend to his 27 children besides his wife, and he (the columnist) raised an innocuous and genuine question as to why even the eldest who should have been 27 years old – presuming a childbirth every year – did not go to work to support the family, he had to incur the wrath of the class teacher!

The teacher here, could have creatively saved the day, by an explanation that the children were triplets for nine succeeding years, and the three eldest were too young, at 9, to work!

In another instance, yours sincerely was explaining to his elder daughter, then aged 3, the adage 'God helps those who help themselves', when she shot back, 'why?'. She threw two contentions, at her age, in support of her inability to digest it. "(1) When you can help yourself, where is the need for God to come to your help? (2) God should help those who help others and not those who help themselves!".

What a thought from different angles at that tender age! A thought that set your columnist thinking for a suitable explanation on these lines: If we do all we can to help ourselves, God will step in to do what we cannot, to help us! With a further expansion that if God helps us, it is because we have faith in His capabilities, and if He does not help us, it is because He has faith in our capabilities! – a thought that later enriched his spiritual discourses.

Hats off to the kid, a source of inspiration to her dad right from that tender age! The bottom line is, till the children grow up to learn to succumb to mediocrity, we have to learn from them, or be inspired by them!

If life is an art aided by science, creativity is called for in both. Science works on the supply side, while art, on the demand side. Science provides the comforts, and the art (of life) should make us feel comfortable with the comforts available.

The demands of life constantly apply pressure on science (and technology) to supply more, which is possible only through productivity and innovation – components of a creativity pack. We are pushed to the point of 'create or perish'. The art of life is to consume out of the new creations, and expansions which can be labelled as 'interest'.

Let us not consume the social corpus (meaning the existing limited supplies), but leave it intact for the generation next to consume the interest earned on it, in their turn, leaving the corpus intact.

Again, by Pareto principle, the 'creativity pack' cannot come from every member of the society, but only from those few, who are 'sleepless themselves, to give others sleep'. Let us enter into a 'creativity pact' not to lull them to sleep, nor throw spanner in their efforts.

Let us get rid of 'banana' mind-set and leave the BIG APPLE as legacy.

(The writer, Chief Finance Officer, LOKTAK DOWNSTREAM HYDROELECTRIC CORPORATION LTD., is a poet, motivational speaker and soft skills trainer, and can be contacted on e-mail: beerangi(AT)rediffmail(DOT)com. He is the initiator of PRICE BASED COSTING as distinct from COST BASED PRICING, as Secretary of The Jammu-Srinagar Chapter of The Institute of Cost Accountants of India. This citing is an extract from his book "CREATIVITY – THE BIG APPLE")