Creativity (20 page)

However, at any point in time, what matters most is that we shape the immediate surroundings, activities, and schedules so as to feel in harmony with the small segment of the universe where we happen to be located. It is nice if this location is as fetching as a villa on Lake Como; it is a far greater challenge when fate throws you into a Siberian gulag. At either extreme, what counts is for consciousness to find ways to adapt its rhythms to what is outside and, to a certain extent, to transform what it encounters outside to its own rhythms. Being in tune with place and time, we ex
perience the reality of our unique existence and its relationship to the cosmos. And from this knowledge original thoughts and original actions follow with greater ease.

The implications for everyday life are simple: Make sure that where you work and live reflects your needs and your tastes. There should be room for immersion in concentrated activity and for stimulating novelty. The objects around you should help you become what you intend to be. Think about how you use time and consider whether your schedule reflects the rhythms that work best for you. If in doubt, experiment until you discover the best timing for work and rest, for thought and action, for being alone and for being with people.

Creating a harmonious, meaningful environment in space and time helps you to become personally creative. It may help you achieve a life that reflects your individuality, a life that is rarely boring and rarely out of control; a life that makes others realize the possibilities for uniqueness and growth inherent in the human condition. But creating such a life does not guarantee that you will be recognized as a genius, as a historically significant creative figure. To achieve historical creativity many other conditions must be met. For instance, you must be lucky, for to excel in som
e domains you might need the
right genes, you might have to be born in the right family, at the right historical moment. Without access to the domain, potential is fruitless: How many Congolese would make great skiers? Are there really no Papuans who could contribute to nuclear physics? And finally, w
ithout the support of a field, even the most promising talent will not be recognized. But if creativity with a capital
C
is largely beyond our control, living a creative personal life is not. And in terms of ultimate fulfillment, the latter may be the most important accomplishment.

T
here is a certain amount of voyeurism involved in reading—and writing—about eminently creative people. It is a little like watching celebrity shows like
Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
, where one is allowed to peek behind the facade into the living rooms and bedrooms of people whom we envy from afar. But there is also a perfectly legitimate reason for reflecting on what happens to exceptional individuals from early childhood to old age. Their lives suggest possibilities for being that are in many ways richer and more exciting than most of us experience. By reading about them,
it is possible to envision ways of breaking out from the routine, from the constraints of genetic and social conditioning, to a fuller existence. It is true that the accomplishments of these creative persons are to a great extent influenced by sheer luck—the good fortune of having been born with exceptional genes, or of having had a supportive environment, or happening to be at the right place at the right time. But many people with similar luck aren’t creative. So beyond these external factors where luck holds sway, what allows certain individuals to make memorable contributions to the culture
is a personal resolution to shape their lives to suit their own goals instead of letting external
forces rule their destiny. Indeed, it could be said that the most obvious achievement of these people is that they created their own lives. And how they achieved this is something worth knowing, because it can be applied to all our lives, whether or not we are going to make a creative contribution. Hence what follows is not intended as light entertainment but as an exploration of how human potential can be expanded.

C
HILDHOOD AND
Y
OUTH

In our culture—perhaps in all cultures—some of the most cherished stories relate the childhoods of heroes. If a man or woman is held in high esteem, the popular imagination wants to find a sign of greatness as soon as possible in that person’s life, to justify and explain the success that followed. Here is one such story.

As the fog slowly lifts, one after the other the bare hilltops burst from the shadows and blaze in the sunlight. A shepherd boy reaches into the pocket of his cape for an old crust and chews on it uneasily. His dog has been looking for some time toward the valley where the old mill stands, as if something is afoot down in the darkness. And now the ewes begin to stir. A yearling, scared by the tension in the air, starts to bleat as if lost
.

Then the shepherd boy hears the dry clip-clop of hooves coming up the rocky path and almost immediately sees the outline of a rider emerge from the shadows below. Who could this stranger be? He has only a slender sword at his side, so he is not a warrior; he wears none of the sacred symbols of the clergy; he seems to lack the caution of a traveling merchant. Yet he is certainly no peasant, richly dressed as he is in blue velvet hose and a golden mantle. What other sort of man can there be, who can ride so easily through the lonely hills of Tuscany in the Year of Our Lord 1271?

The rider smiles down at the boy, shifting in the saddle. His eyes slowly circle the horizon
.

“Well, I think I am good and lost. I was trying to find the shortest road from Florence to Lucca, but after a full night’s traveling, I seem to have left all human dwellings behind. Where are we, actually?” he asks, turning toward the boy. “And what name do they call you?”

The shepherd gestures in the direction opposite to where the sun was rising. “If you followed the creek down there for two leagues, you’d be in the Valley of the Mugello. To the left is the road to Florence, and to the
right the one to Lucca. And my name is Angiolo, son of Bondone.”

At this the rider nods, then yawns. He looks around at the ridges rising and falling like the waves of a tawny sea, and then, as if shaking himself awake from sleep, he slides off the saddle
.

“Sweet Mother of God, but I am tired. I hope, Angiolotto, that you have some fresh ewe’s milk, because I haven’t stopped to eat since this past noon. Don’t worry, I will pay you well for it,” he says, jingling coins in the fancy red leather purse that hangs from his belt
.

Angiolo uncovers a piece of cheese and the jar of milk he has kept behind a slab of granite. He apologizes to the rider for having no bread to offer, but the gentleman takes out afresh chestnut pie from his saddlebag, which they share
.

After they have eaten in silence for a while, the boy cannot resist asking “May I query, my Lord, what takes you to Lucca? I would wager you are not from these parts.”

“And the wager would be yours. I was born up in Lombardy, on the banks of the river Po. My master is Teboldo of the Visconti who earlier this year was crowned pope as His Holiness Gregory, the tenth of that name. I rode out two moons ago from the Flaminian gate of Rome on a mission from him.”

Angiolo is not sure what all this meant, but being a curious boy, he keeps questioning further. “And what kind of a mission would that be?”

The rider smiles. “His Holiness wants the best craftsmen to come to Rome and make the Eternal City as beautiful as it deserves to be. I am supposed to find master builders, sculptors, and painters, and convince them to enter the service of His Holiness.”

The boy thinks about this for a while. “How do you find out who the best craftsmen are?”

“Oh, one asks questions, listens to stories. One looks at the work in churches, in palaces.” Here a shade of smugness passes over the features of the rider. “But I have also my own special test. I ask any man who is supposed to be good to draw a perfect circle, a cubit across, freehand. If he is really good, he will draw something that looks quite round. But few do come close without a compass or a string held at the center.”

Angiolo rummages among the ashes of last night’s fire and comes up with a stick of charcoal. “What?” he asks. “You mean like this?” And with one smooth movement, he draws a perfect circle on the slab of stone from which they were eating
.

The pope’s envoy scratches his head. He looks at the boy, looks at the circle on the stone. He looks away at the hills, now almost melting in sunshine.
“Not bad, not bad at all. How about drawing natural things? Have you ever drawn people, or, say, animals?”

Now it is Angiolo’s turn to smile. He glances at the fat ram, sunning itself at his feet, the leader of the flock, and with a few quick strokes he has sketched it so vividly that all it lacks is the Lord’s breath for it to start bleating. The rider from Rome becomes very thoughtful.

This is a version of the story of how the great painter Giotto was discovered, a story that all schoolchildren in Italy have heard or read at some time or other, probably many times through their lives. There are illustrations in schoolbooks and texts of Angiolotto drawing his circle on the stone with the startled envoy looking on, or of his drawing the sheep while the rider holds his head in amazement. The story goes on to tell how the envoy took the boy to the workshop of the famous Cimabue, there to learn the fine points of painting. Giotto—as the boy was soon called—began to paint one as
tonishing picture after another. His fame soon surpassed that of his master, and he became known as the greatest artist in Italy, perhaps in all of Christendom. It is a story that most educated people in Europe know and cherish.

Unfortunately, like many good stories, this one reflects more our psychological needs than reality. When I recently searched for material on Giotto’s childhood at a leading university library, I found 102 volumes on the painter. None of them claimed to have any information about Giotto’s childhood or, for that matter, about the first thirty years of his life. A typical biography starts as follows: “According to old documents, Giotto was born in 1266, at Vespignano di Mugello or in Florence,
but nothing is known about his youth, there are only legends
. The only facts are those of his artistic
beginnings in Assisi, but even these are unclear and difficult to establish” (italics added).

All the volumes agree that Giotto’s style was extraordinarily novel, that he resurrected the dead art of painting and prepared the way for the renaissance of the arts that was to come a century later. But the precocity of his genius is the stuff of myth, and the legends that sprang up around his life are an indication of how much we need events to be predictable, to make sense. If someone becomes outstanding, we want to believe that unmistakable signs of greatness were there early for all to see. Whether it is the Buddha, Jesus,
Mozart, Edison, or Einstein, genius must have revealed itself in the earliest years of life.

In fact, it is impossible to tell whether a child will be creative or not by basing one’s judgment on his or her early talents. Some children do show signs of extraordinary precocity in some domain or other: Mozart was an accomplished pianist and composer at a very early age, Picasso drew quite nice pictures when he was a boy, and many great scientists skipped grades in school and astonished their elders with the nimbleness of their minds. But so did many other children whose early promise fizzled out without leaving any trace in the history books.

Children can show tremendous talent, but they cannot be creative because creativity involves changing a way of doing things, or a way of thinking, and that in turn requires having mastered the old ways of doing or thinking. No matter how precocious a child is, this he or she cannot do. Mozart in his teens might have been as accomplished as any musician alive, but he could not have changed the way people played music until his way of making music was taken seriously, and for this to happen he had to spend at least a decade mastering the domain of musical composition and then produce
a number of convincing works. But if the real childhood accomplishments of creative individuals are no different from those of many others who never attain any distinction, the mind will do its best to weave appealing stories to compensate for reality’s lack of imagination.

We all know the mechanism that generates such stories, because we have used it to make our own lives, or those of our children, more interesting and more sensible. For example, little Jennifer has a poem published in the junior high literary magazine; soon her parents tell their friends about the clever things she used to say as a toddler, and how she liked to listen to nursery rhymes, and how early she was able to recognize written words, and so on. If Jennifer then goes on to be a real writer, the stories of her childhood are likely to become ever more clearly focused on her prec
ocity. Not because anyone is consciously trying to alter the truth, but because as one tells a tale over and over, the tendency is to highlight what in hindsight we feel are the important parts and to eliminate details that contradict the point of the story. Our sense of inner consistency demands it, and the audience will also appreciate the story more.
With each telling, Jennifer’s childhood becomes more remarkable. Thus are myths born.

Prodigious Curiosity

Children cannot be creative, but all creative adults were once children. Thus it makes sense to ask what creative individuals were like when they were children, or what sorts of events shaped the early lives of those persons who later accomplished something creative. But when we look at what is known about the childhoods of eminent creative persons, it is difficult to find any consistent pattern.

Some children who later astonished the world were quite remarkable right out of their cradles. But many of them showed no spark of unusual talent. Young Einstein was no prodigy. Winston Churchill’s gifts as a statesman were not obvious until middle age. Tolstoy, Kafka, and Proust did not impress their elders as future geniuses.

The same pattern holds for the interviews we conducted. Some of our respondents, like the physicist Manfred Eigen, or the composer and musician Ravi Shankar, displayed unusual gifts in their respective domains before their teens. Others, such as the chemist Linus Pauling, or the novelist Robertson Davies, blossomed in their twenties. John Reed, CEO of Citicorp, made a decisive impact on the banking industry in his forties; Enrico Randone, president of the giant Assicurazioni Generali insurance conglomerate of Italy, left his mark on the company he led while in his late seventies. J
ohn Gardner discovered he had a gift for politics in his midfifties, when President Johnson asked him to be the first secretary of Health, Education and Welfare, and Barry Commoner decided to break away from academic science and start his environmental movement at about the same age. In all these instances of late blooming, the earlier years provide at best only glimpses of extraordinary ability in the domain they eventually turned to.

If being a prodigy is not a requirement for later creativity, a more than usually keen curiosity about one’s surroundings appears to be. Practically every individual who has made a novel contribution to a domain remembers feeling awe about the mysteries of life and has rich anecdotes to tell about efforts to solve them.

A good example of the intense interest and curiosity attributed to creative persons is the following story told about Charles Darwin’s youth. One day as he was walking in the woods near his home he
noticed a large beetle scurrying to hide under the bark of a tree. Young Charles collected beetles, and this was one he didn’t have in his collection. So he ran to the tree, peeled off the bark, and grabbed the insect. But as he did so he saw that there were two more specimens hiding there. The bugs were so large that he couldn’t hold more than one in each hand, so he popped the third in his mouth and ran all the way home with the three beetles, one of which was trying to escape down his throat.

Vera Rubin looked out of her bedroom window and saw the starry skies for the first time when she was seven years old, after her family had moved to the edge of the city. The experience was overwhelming. From that moment on, she says, she could not imagine not spending her life studying the stars. The physicist Hans Bethe remembers that from age five on, the best times he had were when playing with numbers. When he was eight years old he was making long tables of the powers of two and of the other integers. It’s not that he was especially brilliant at this, but he enjoyed doin
g it more than anything else. John Bardeen, the only person to be awarded two Nobel Prizes in physics, was good in school—he skipped from third to seventh grade—but did not get interested in math until he was ten. After that, however, math became his favorite pastime; whenever he could, he solved math problems. Linus Pauling, also a double Nobel Prize winner, fell in love with chemistry before he even entered school, while helping his father mix drugs in his pharmacy. The physicist John Wheeler remembers: “I must have been three or four years old in the bathtub and my mother bathing me, and I was asking her ho
w far does the universe go…and the world go…and beyond that. Of course she got stuck as much as I have always been stuck since.”