As Albert Einstein said, ‘CREATIVITY IS INTELLIGENCE HAVING FUN.’

By Dahlia Tera

May we say that we are still in pandemic period or in the shocking post-pandemic period suffering the social, economical, psychological consequences of Covid-19 plague or in pre-pandemic period “waiting” for a new “mutant virus” which seems it “attacks” more the children? Will it be a “third” wave of contagions and deaths all over the world?

The numbers are not optimistic and no one knows very well which way to turn, whether they are “advanced” counties or “ less advanced” ones.

Anyway, in the present of humanity, the upheavals are great: from the school of our children to our disappeared jobs often, from the fear for our elders to the numerous precautions as masks and social distances, restrictions of all kinds that changed our relationships with others and erased the smile from our now “half-faces”.

So, the situation seems sometimes like science-fiction scenario and today, whether we are pre, post or between pandemic, that Covid-19 distresses us and creates a lost of uncertainties, making us weak economically , not to say desperate for some -many – of us.

In this context, on these pages, last days, I was wondering and reflecting about the meaning and the practical contents of a word I often heard or read : SOLIDARITY. ( see the article:” In this time of vaccines, may we all be friendly alike in this suffering world!” (https://nepalnamcha.com/english-more/1289/)

They are my reflections not as a specialist in sociology or psychology but as a normal “man in the street” with a family, two children, a job, a home, with rights and duties, with struggles and hopes.

And today, again in this guise, I would like to reflect about another word I often heard and read in these months: CREATIVITY.

Trying to jump out of this horrible comatose period, you don’t have to wait for something to “fall from the sky” but you have to be “CREATIVE”… Many, relatives and friends, mass media, Internet and social networks, are suggesting this way.

For me, this word is linked to Art. I think about artists, graphic designers, painters. I imagine unusual forms that look like nothing, I imagine colors used in an original and not real way as in Abstract painting, I imagine a new and innovative language. I feel also some perplexity because when you get off the beaten track, there is always a bit of fear, of apprehension, of not feeling able to understand. The imagination and the fantasy that are part of creativity, go beyond knowledge. Knowledge gives a kind of security; creativity is stimulating, visionary , inventor, maker.

Yes, it can be fragile and wrong and it is hard to fall but it is worse never to have tried.

So, in these months and days, especially when the world of work has turned upside down and stopped, we have to bring out the creativity that is in each of us. That does not mean that we will become Leonardo da Vinci , Picasso, Mozart or Beethoven.

We have to try to introduce news, we have to seek solutions to problems with innovations..

We have to reinvent ourselves individually and collectively.

And what does it mean concretely ? For example, recently, many tourisms’ Entrepreneurs and Associations are working hard on this way with new proposals and itineraries.

I will try to give some other examples:

• don’t be afraid to completely change job.
• develop own skills in the use of software and computers in general.
• have an humble behavior, ready to learn; there are no stupid job..
• don ’t be afraid to seem like you are going back, to country side works for example.
• don’t be ashamed of working with your hands..
• look for ideas in the fields that were born of the virus and will remain active forever now: online selling, home delivery, all kind of startups…
• work as a team if possible : often there is an help each other…
• get up early and don’t give up
• remember the fields of culture and tourism with visual visits, educational applications…
• etc.

Yes, I know I am “nobody” to say all this but they don’t want to be teachings or cheap moralism, it is just my reflections, my experiences, when I have to get involved too and when I can’t explain myself in words , sometimes I write poetry, like this.

IT MAKES YAKS FLY

It colors and radiates,
It mixes and brews,
It amuses and makes laugh,
It invents and innovates,
It imagines and discovers,
It dazzles and dumfounds,
It befuddles and enlivens,
IT IS BOUNDLESS….

It makes yaks fly,
It gives teeth to the chickens,
It makes apples square,
It colors the elephants in checkered red,
IT IS BOUNDLESS….

It is brushes in freedom that paint a picture,
It is words from the writer inventing a story,
It is musical notes and rhythm never heard before,
It is an unexpected scientific discovery ,
It is n ingenious way of doing,
It inspires and vitalizes,
IT IS BOUNDLESS….

Imaginative creativity…
Let’s be creative!
Looking trusting for new ways
In this upset period.

New ideas are the substance of change and progress in all fields, from the science to the art, from the politic to the personal happiness itself : those who can exercise their creativity are better off with themselves.