Okay. Almost everybody agrees: we humans can shape our own worlds. All we have to do is make the choices that help us get to our own bright and happy place. Making choices, deciding where and how we want to go, is our best and brightest super-power, it says here. So, why does it keep going glongy? Every time we use this supposed super-power of ours, why is it that the options we choose rarely transport us over the threshold…
I’ve been circling around this latest concept I’ve stumbled across like I imagine an awestruck fan would do to take in Michelangelo’s Pietà at the Vatican. My head keeps going, “Wow…wow…wow.” My heart is drowning in the swelling sound of some Gregorian chant or something. OOOH! The idea that each human being’s ability to make choices can absolutely affect and shape both the forms their own lives take as well as the world in which they live is a mind-boggle…
John Milton (an English poet who wrote epic poems in the 17th century) once wrote: “The mind is its own place, and in itself Can make a Heav’n of Hell, a Hell of Heav’n.” Milton did call it right. All of us humans do have one super-power. Every single one of us can shape our own reality and make up our own world. It’s why we find everybody else’s stories so fascinating, I suppose. Because we each have our own…
All the wise guys say it: Creativity is a human birthright. As long as you’re human, they say, you have the capacity to “consciously relate and participate in the world” and, out of that, you make stuff that affects the world and everything and everyone around you. Even the guys in lab coats agree. The main thing that distinguishes us humans from the other critters wandering around on the planet is our jones for seeing and solving problems.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You’re busy, I’m busy, everybody’s busy. In fact, it seems like everybody’s drowning in busy, busy, busy. We bounce around doing this, handling that, rushing through our days, knocking off all of our bullets on that mile-long to-do list, steam-rolling through the obstacles, knocking off the challenges and so on and so forth. Rolling, rolling, rolling ‘til we drop. But, it’s good, right? Yup, yup, yup! Or…is it?