Creativity, Individuality and Happiness

 After reading The Creative Spirit by Dan Goleman, Paul Kaufman and Michael Roy, which considers creative spirit is very important and surveillance, evaluation, rewards, competition, over-control, restricting choice and pressure might be creativity killers and “flow” is the key supporter, creativity has been one of keywords to my thinking. Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior and The Tiger Mother Responds to Readers compare types of education between western and eastern. Western parents often prefer to “freestyle” while eastern parents, take the example of Chinese parents, often prefer to “strict-style” which means good grades and no outing. Therefore, some regard “Chinese-style” as creativity killer for that consists of surveillance, evaluation, competition, over-control and restricting choice, of course, children feel under pressure and unhappy.

I do agree with the philosophy of children don’t choose their parents and they don’t even choose to be born which comes from the west. Further more, I don’t think parents owe their children and vice versa. Everyone is an individuality and everyone is the only person should be responsible for their own. Parents cannot give children a promising future and that is not one of parents’ duties. There should be some kind of mutual faith between parents and children. Parents believe children are individualities and independent and let them choose their own life. Children believe parents are come from good will and they must believe in themselves because good will cannot promise a good result. For-your-sake, which is what parents usually say, may be the Big Brother and finally kill the creativity.

Let me quote those words from Why Chinese Mothers Are Superior, “everyone is special in their special own way…even losers are special in their own special way”, ruthless and faultless. Life is not a win-or-lose game. Don’t get me wrong, sense of achievement after winning can be one of the roots of happiness. Creativity does not have relation to success or usefulness but to being happy and never quit doubting or challenging.

Believe in children and see what individualities they will be, they might not be as creative as Thomas Edison or Steve Jobs, but at least, they will be as happy as what individualities can be.