The world is desperately in need of whatever you might want to call it- a reboot, a makeover, a Renaissance period, newness, chutney, a Bento box etc. It’s needed because one day rolls into the next, and it’s one long Groundhog Day with a blanket of boredom, fear, anger and depression covering the world.
Wherefore art thou, Creativity, in all your many forms? And, to some, it’s not what you might have done and who you met decades ago and still living on the crumbs of fading memories, but what have you done lately?
Working from home, it appears, has not only dulled social skills, it’s short-circuited what once might have been inquisitive minds looking for answers in everything around us. You know, trying to find solutions to problems along the way and maybe stumbling onto how to bring that crazy little thing called happiness back into lives.
Almost a year ago, the very small team here in Hong Kong worked on a series of online messages of positivity about how Creativity cannot and should not be locked down.
Produced was a music track and accompanying music video. There was an original short story written and produced.
It was designed to be a Wake Up call to arms and how we need to move away from the somnambulism that had taken over lives and slowed everything down to, not just a crawl, but a numbing and soulless thud.
Thinking back, I guess I was reminding myself not to ever give up. How I had loved everything I was doing, and that even the mean spiritedness of some to trip me up when trying to get somewhere, never dulled my excitement for adventure.
Of course, the more I travelled, the less I knew and this unholy quest for excitement took a toll on my marriage and hurt the only woman I will ever love.
As Dylan sang, “I must have been mad, I didn’t know what I had, I threw it all away”.
Still, they’ve all been lessons learned and, hopefully, helped re-arrange my life by bringing in a new interior designer.
These life changing lessons have also made me adamant not to repeat them and become a dullard commenting on every one of those click bait Facebook questionnaires and living in the past.
Memories are great to have. Often, they’re all we have. But living inside these sometimes throws up a false sense of reality.
Right now, many of us are caught between a rock and a pretty nondescript place, somewhere between Nut Bush City Limits and the soft shoe Lido Shuffle.
Though one can try and create, this adrenaline rush is thwarted midstream when realising that it’s a locked down upside down fruitcake world where everything is functioning pretty much on the downbeat.
So what’s the point? Why bother? Maybe to prove the doubters wrong and still trying to make your parents proud. They’re still living with and without you.
It’s also weaving one’s way through an obstacle course with that green eyed monster known as Jealousy often making its presence felt. But as jealousy must be earned, you must be doing something right.
Though the ironically labelled “Social media”, with those “Like” buttons and emphasis placed on hashtags and upping numbers for sale don’t help, life goes on and needing new challenges to create new opportunities.
Sometimes it’s like being Noah and travelling against the tide of some weird new version of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Scrolling and trolling, scrolling and trolling...
Negativity only shows up character flaws that were perhaps always there- even amongst one-time friends. It was a different and unmasked world back then and perhaps everyone was too busy doing The Macarena and thinking that those good times will last forever.
Today, any morsel of success is often envied. Maybe individual success is in short supply...
Trying to break away from the monotony of mediocrity is often discouraged as, well, it’s easier. It might also actually lead to a healthier and happier place.
We can’t have that, can we? But we can.
Instead of looking at ways to tear things down, surely, we should make it our job to help things grow by inspiring others, and which, in turn, will make a U-turn and inspire us.
Selfish thinking never leads anywhere. Instead, and as Otis Redding sang, Try a little tenderness along with honest to goodness kindness.
It’s all free- and at your fingertips.
