12 June, 2007

Originality ... made great people !!




Recently, I read Creating Minds, a book by Howard Gardner. In this book Howard Gardner has described seven personalities in the descending order of his perception of their being creative. The names of the great personalities are as follows

Sigmund Freud, Albert Einstein, Pablo Picasso, Igor Stravinsky, T. S Eliot, Martha Graham
and Mahatma Gandhi.

The author's focus here is to search for patterns to find out similarities and differences.
Author quotes, "I believe that if we can better understand the breakthroughs achieved by individuals deliberately drawn from diverse domain, we should be able to tease out principles that govern creative human activity, wherever it arises I shall argue that a creative breakthrough in one realm cannot be collapsed uncritically with breakthroughs in other realms.”

He also says, “Each creative breakthrough entails an intersection of the childlike and the mature; the peculiar genius of the modern in the century has been the incorporation of the sensibility of a very young child.

The book starts with the description of the principle components in the study of creativity, then goes on to describe the seven personalities in the context of these components and ends with drawing the similarities and differences among these creative minds.

Of all the personalities, the people about whom I was interested to know about were Freud, Einstein and Gandhiji.

Well the things that are still there in me after reading about them are:

They all had a good emotional support of their near and dear ones and friends.
They chose to shine in the area where they felt very wholesome. The area, where they could identify themselves the best.
They all isolated themselves from the society when they stood out with their first breakthrough.
After this, they gained supporters’ support and admirers’ love to make their creation widespread.

While reading this, if you were able to identify yourself with any of the characteristics mentioned above, then you may be the next creating mind of this century.

We all are unique creation of the supreme power that rules this universe and we all have creativity within us. The only thing lacking is the right blend of the circumstances, opportunities, determination and of course luck.

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