Creativity: Flow and the Psychology of Discovery and Invention

by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi

Perhaps only art, dance, and music are more ancient; the beginnings of technology and arithmetic probably contemporaneous. What makes words so powerful is that they enrich life by expanding the range of individual experience. Without stories and books, we would be limited to knowing only what has happened to us or to those whom we have met. With books we can join Herodotus during his travels to Egypt, or be with Lewis and Clark on their epic journey to the Pacific, or imagine what it might be like to travel beyond our galaxy a few hundred years hence. But more important, the written word allows us to understand better what is happening within ourselves. In recording real or imaginary events, the writer arrests the evanescent stream of experience by naming its aspects and making them enduring in language. Then by reading and repeating a verse or passage of prose, we can savor the images and their meanings and thus understand