The other day, I suddenly had a hankering for macaroni and cheese. I don’t even remember the last time I ate mac-n-cheese, but since I was already wandering the aisles of the grocery store, I took a glance at the shelves.
Gluten-free, dairy-free, cheezy mac. I read the ingredients and started laughing: chickpeas, lentils, pea protein, tapioca starch, annatto color, onion…
God, I love humans. We are so damn creative.
If we were living 200 years ago, we would pick the peas and perhaps boil them in some water over a fire, and eat them. Simple.
But the order of the day these days, is complexity. So the process goes like this:
“Hey, I know, what if we take these chickpeas, dry them and grind them up and add some tapioca starch to make a paste, THEN we can put them into this doo-hicky that makes them into a shell shape (complete with little stripey lines to simulate actual seashells) and THEN drop them into boiling water so they cook into little chewy shells!
And then! Oooh! Ooh! I know! Let’s do the same with peas. But first we’ll cook down the seeds of the Bixa Orellana tree – you know, the one we found last time we were visiting Kenya – so we have a yellow-orange color. Then we’ll dry and grind some onion, mix it with the ground-up dried peas (let’s call it “pea protein”) and some of the orangey-color, and smush it up until it becomes goop!
THEN! Oh, this is where it gets awesome. We’ll smear the goop all over our little chewy shells, and voila! Dinner is served!”
That is an awful lot of work, to provide nourishment for a body. Clearly, we do not eat simply for the purpose of caloric intake – as a species, this process is incredibly energetically inefficient.
So why would we go to the trouble of participating in so much complexity?
Because creation is fun.
You know it. Any time you’ve combined different ingredients – whether it’s for a technological problem you’re trying to solve, a new meal, an art experiment, something in your garden or shop, a new cool idea related to ANY aspect of your existence – you are creating something new. Innovating. Wondering “what happens if we do THIS?”
And unless you are running a belief system that “the unknown is scary” or “I have to get this right or else really bad stuff happens,” creating something new is really, really fun.
But let’s go deeper. Fun is a side effect of what other phenomena at work?
In the case of our pea-based cheezy mac, we have “problem-solving.” The problem? Many people have developed digestive issues that make gluten and dairy problematic. So coming up with gluten-free and dairy-free solutions adds specificity to the creativity. It’s not just “what happens if we make orange goop?” It’s “what happens if we make orange goop in a way that HELPS SOMEONE GET SOMETHING THEY WANT!?”
But is it really just that? There’s yet another ingredient in our creative recipe that deepens the satisfaction.
Our pea-based concoction is creative, and it provides a solution for someone (perhaps oneself) who needs it. We could make an argument for passion and purpose, here – the passion that arises when one is exploring new territory in an area of interest, and the purpose that directs that energy into being of service to another.
But in addition to those elements, we also have: familiarity.
The creators could have made pea-based orange pudding, and it would have fulfilled the same functions: creating something new, that helps someone get what they want (a gluten-free, dairy-free meal). But why would we eat orange goopy pudding made of peas? Unless we were starving on a desert island, most of us likely would not.
But the third element is that the “template” for creation was already in place. For decades, macaroni and cheese has been a cultural icon, shaping the tastebud preferences of children since 1937. We KNOW mac-n-cheese. And because it’s familiar, it feels comfortable. And one of the functions of food, beyond caloric intake, is often comfort. Creating the illusion of safety through familiarity.
We turn to what has come before, and in so doing, we sooth our frazzled nervous system into feeling safe – not because it’s inherently safety-giving, but because familiarity feels good.
The same phenomenon is at play as we consider the complex variables involved in building a better world.
- Creativity: We have all the building blocks (people, ingenuity, natural resources, education, technology, knowledge), but we must get increasingly creative in how we think about and organize them.
- Problem-Solving: We have the catalyst for creation – we must solve the problem of “how do we support 8 billion of us in a way that lets us and the planet survive.”
- Familiarity: We must play at the edges of how much intensity is actually required in order to effect change – to leave the “familiar” and create something new. Must we really be starving on a desert island before we will consider eating orange goop? Must we really sculpt orange goop into seashell shapes before we will touch it? (If you have ever fed a toddler, you know this is not an abstract question and in fact raises additional conversations around parenting styles, authority, free will, and the relationship between desire and resistance…)
How might we reinvent the major elements of society into an infrastructure that works for all – our economy, healthcare, government, education, food supply, workplaces, and cultural norms that reinforce all of it – by bringing forward what’s come before (so we have a sense of familiarity) AND creating something completely different that fundamentally changes how we relate to ourselves, each other, and our planet?
The bad news is that if we try to think about it, it’s too big, too much, too overwhelming.
The good news is that we’re already doing it. And the micro-movements that evolve the whole, are those that happen every time you play at your own edges, do the thing you’ve never done before, and follow your interests to tinker with the things that light you up, from a place of knowing you’re part of a larger whole that benefits from your creative tinkering. (It doesn’t work, of course, if you’re a sociopath tinkering with ways to destroy the whole, due to your own unresolved traumas and festering wounds. We’ll discuss this more in another article.)
It’s sometimes easy to think that we must foment a “revolution” in order to effect change. Maybe. And maybe it’s actually most effective and easier if we simply build upon what has come before, and infuse it with different values, different motives, different intentions, with a wild creativity that allows us to see basic building blocks in new ways.
Whatever your building blocks are, trust them.
You have the education, expertise, wisdom, experience, talents, passions, resources, relationships, connections, curiosity, and creativity to reinvent any aspect of your life, your community, your business, your career, and your corner of the world.
The question is, how much fun will you allow yourself to have, in doing so?
P.S. I bought the pea-based cheezy mac, smeared the orange goop over the seashell shapes, and enjoyed the meal immensely, laughing all the while. Humans are so weird.