Creativity Abounds

Walk into a waiting room. What do you see? Heads bowed over cell phones. Eyes glued to images on tiny screens. Fingers roving and flicking. Most do this. Almost all young people do, from 5 to 35.

And silence. The room is quiet with bodies hunched over phones.

Waiting rooms used to contain 10 to 20 people waiting their names to be called. Next! The room had small children gabbing, rustling around with crayons or pencils on paper hurriedly given by moms to keep them quiet, engaged. The adults scrambled for reading material, anything that would save them from staring vacantly into space, or idly scanning the faces of others in the room. Don’t get caught looking! It was considered rude. A quick smile could cover only a small bit of the embarrassment.

Aging in place I scan my phone, too. I look first at phone calls I missed, then messages left for my return. Then to email. Flip through these, deleting the ads and junk items. Saving the messages that I know will require detailed responses. The other contents I open and read, adjust the calendar as requested, or send brief responses.

Still more time to kill? On to Facebook and see who responded or commented on my posts. Then a  scroll of new material left on FB.

Soon 20 minutes has been consumed and my name is called; I go in to see the doctor, therapist or phlebotomist.

Classrooms are the same. The early bird students have arrived and consumed with their phones. Soon the room is filled with phone divers and the professor arrives and we begin. Eerily silent the room has been. Phones had the attention of their owners.

Idle conversation with these same people is rare these days. But if, for some odd reason, a chat begins, watch where it goes. Dig a little for more information on what they are thinking. Engage them in their view of whatever. You might be surprised to learn they are engaged with life, career, school or other interests that produce a full view of their busy lives.

Do you counsel teenagers? Do you teach them? Do you spend any time with this age group? If you do, what’s on their minds? Do you delve into their interests and wonderings? What are they thinking? What are their yearnings for the future? Are they thinking of such things? or is their attention more immediate?

I think you will find – if you give them but a chance – they have much on their minds. Fertile ideas leap from them and give me pause to think on them. These kids are alive with points of view, some of which are startling to us older people. Did we think about such things when we were their age? Minds flash back 30, 40 or 50 years to ponder that question. Some of us were serious minded. Some of us played with ideas and history and conclusions of the day. Each a jumping-off point for more thinking or study, to determine what ‘ought to be’.

So, here we are in the today of 2018. Many of us worry about the future of our nation, our culture and our families. Will succeeding generations be up to the job of survival and success? Will they rise to challenges – both good and bad? Will they need to fight wars over and over to prove power or ideology? Will they invent new technology, products and services clamoring markets need? Will they reinvent our culture and spread it throughout the land? Will their quiet now burst forth with expanding, explosive new jobs, and economies?

Reinvention. Of self and culture. Not a face lift but a full-on remake and creation of perspectives, world views, et.al. Are their glimpses today of such pending developments?

Yes. It is in the minds of current phone-divers, the budding entrepreneurs yearning to build their own business, working in a basement or garage or attic. They are thinking and piecing together new understandings of the evolving contexts of life. They are the inventor geniuses at work today. Very much under the radar. But present just the same.

I have a positive outlook for the future. I have grand kids who think and express themselves. They play music, invent music, perform arted expressions. I work with teenagers overwhelmed by cultures they do not yet understand but are searching for an anchor; we steer them away from drugs and alcohol.

And I work with entrepreneurs dreaming of their own activities that will support livelihoods of value – both financial and intrinsic.

Those of you who expose yourself to these buds of culture see what I see. Our culture is alive and well, reproducing itself in new ways and directions. What will be is yet unknown but the misty architecture of greatness takes shape. I sense it and see it imperfectly. I know it is there.

So I am positive about the future. Among us are souls working to break free. Creative minds inventing new futures for all of us to benefit from.

Come look from my perch at the world. It is exciting. It is expansive. It is hope.

The horrors and worries of this day will pass and be replaced by the new realities of hope. I wish you to witness this. I hope you are part of this.

July 9, 2018