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“Thousands of geniuses live and die undiscovered—either by themselves or by others.” -Mark Twain
Call in the inspired bard, Demodocus. God has given the man the gift of song.
While many theories were put forth, there was one common factor that researchers recognized in all great performers: they practiced so hard and intensely that it hurt.
Studies of people with extraordinary abilities, like Ted Williams, have given rise to what Swedish psychologist Dr. K Anders Ericsson called the “10,000 hour” rule. The rule’s premise is that, regardless of whether one has an innate aptitude for an activity or not, mastery of it takes around ten thousand hours of focused, intentional practice.
Opportunities are whispers, not foghorns.
If we can’t hear their soft rhythms—if we are too busy rushing about, waiting for thunderclaps of revelation, inspiration, and certainty—or if we can spot them but can’t nurture them into real advantages, then we might as well be blind to them.
Well, as the preeminent mythologist Joseph Campbell said, deep down inside, we don’t seek the meaning of life, but the experience of being alive. And that’s what the nature of genius is ultimately about.
“Facts and ideas are dead in themselves and it is the imagination that gives life to them.” -W. I. B. Beveridge
“there is a boundary to men’s passions when they act from feelings; but none when they are under the influence of imagination.”
In every field of human endeavor, the more visionary the work, the less likely it is to be quickly understood and embraced by lesser minds.
This is the beauty of imagination. An unexpected dead end in one journey is merely an opportunity to set a new course for another. Losing what we have can only do us real harm when we feel we can’t create it, or something equally valuable or compelling, again, and that ability resides squarely in our imagination.
In his new Manhattan lab, funded meagerly by friends, Tesla’s wondrous imagination led him to research the resonant frequencies of the earth. He mistakenly caused an earthquake that engulfed the surrounding city blocks, breaking windows and shaking the plaster off of the walls. He announced that he had discovered how to turn the earth into a giant tuning fork, and that, in theory, the principles could shatter the Empire State Building or even possibly cause the earth to “split open like an apple.”
Einstein said that “imagination is more important than knowledge,” because “knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.”
person’s life is “dyed with the color of his imagination.” Your journey to greatness certainly will be too.
Mark Twain said “all ideas are second-hand, consciously and unconsciously drawn from a million outside sources.”
When you start viewing creativity as a process of combination, and imagination as the ability to connect, stretch, and merge things in new ways, creative brilliance becomes less mystifying. A creative genius is just better at connecting the dots than others are.
The more varied your knowledge and experiences are, the more likely you are to be able to create new associations and fresh ideas.
It takes curiosity to find your call to adventure, it takes courage to venture into the unknown, and it takes imagination to create your path.
