Category: 2024

“Creating our world with every thought.” Kermit talks about how our thoughts and views shape our reality, and even something as simple as watching a frog can be a creative act, and that creativity is not just for artists. Which I agree, our thoughts manifest how we feel which influences how we behave and act; creating our reality. 

I’ve always thought of myself as imaginative and I often find inspiration in art, but I would consider myself as a consumer of the arts not a creator. When I do create something, I tend to keep it to myself because I get too critical of my work. This self-criticism can really block my creativity, and not be able to do as Aaron said “whatever”. But the concept of beginner’s mind resonated with me because I hope it reminds me that being a beginner has its benefits—it lets us see things in a new way. Which will motivate me to try to create, or at least attempt to.

Because the things we drew were very abstract, we have a lot to work with here. Within these abstract lines, I visioned a superhero comic sort thing. Below is the story:

In the Milky Way;

Our solar system;

On Earth (lines reminded me of latitude and longitude);

Some extraterrestrial being↓;

Opened up a wormhole;

On 3:20 PM;

Targeted Earth;

And threw a bomb;

Which caused Earth’s molecular composition to change;

And the earth itself to crack;

10 MINS BEFORE;

Amy and Bob hanging out under the sun;

Their Mercedes Benz was directly hit by the bomb;

They were very frustrated so they awakened superpowers;

Amy can travel at the speed of lightning;

Bob has laser eyes (light’s reflection and refraction);

THEY FOUGHT WITH THE ALIEN AND THE FIGHT WAS VERY INTENSE;

The three fell to a mountain;

The fight split the mountain;

They fought through the Earth’s crust;

So Earth blew up;

THE END.

I have to be honest, I have never been a big fan of Ted Talks, mainly because through my education I was always shown Ted Talks of people just talking and talking, a lot of life stories (Yes I agree we can get some valuable Information from experiences), and just shows that repeat. Well I guess things change and this is the moment things changed for me. I really resonated with this Ted Talk from Kermit the frog and let me tell you why:

Being Creative is who you are!

This sentence basically speaks for itself. Ever since I was little I have always been the biggest fan of Legos. Heck yeah I still am, I buy 1 or 2 new Lego sets every Month! Apart from that, I always wanted to draw, play computer games and was always open to exploring new ways to express myself creatively. I vividly remember the days when Graffiti were so popular back home, that I watched so many tutorials and tried to put my own spin into the picture.

Find a Mentor!

This has always been a very important part of my life. Transfering from that childhood to early Adulthood life pushed me into exploring Computer Systems Building (Basically Legos for Adults haha) and I found a local mentor which was more then open to help me understand the subject. Even to this day, with every single PC I build, I find a new way to arrange the cables, crazy way to put the RGB Lights, maybe I mount a custom Water cooler or I just decorate the case with weird stickers.

Push yourself and have a beginners mind!

Having a beginners mind opens up so many more possibilites that the opposite. Be open to anything and everything, The biggest rule of creativity is to do something creative just because you can’t do it. Good things always come from failing and pushing yourself harder. That is how we learn and deepen our creative practices

Last but not least, surround yourself with Friends and People that motivate you and push you to be better every single day. Always hear them out, cause the best thing we can do to work on our creativity is to look at a manner from multiple perspectives!

After listening to the TED talk, I have some views about it. Though I believe overall it is a good and reasonable talk, there are aspects I don’t agree.

One is about “The beginners mind”. Apart from the part where I am skeptical that the word “初心” was wrongly translated, I don’t think that having a beginners mind and being able to see many possibilities necessarily contributes to the creative process. These are separate issues when talking about different realms. If the realm is relatively new and you are one of the “pioneers” in the field, sure, be creative! Think about things that no one has thought about before! Because whatever you come up with, you are one of the first people who does that. The act of you participating in this realm is creating experience, and everything you do is a result of creativity. But if the realm is already relatively mature and there are generations before you that have worked on this issue, having a beginners mind, especially when it comes to methodology and approach, will very unlikely be rewarding. In fact, it might greatly hinder your progress and frustrate people working with you.

For example, if you think you came up with an approach to do something, there are generations before you, and guess why they didn’t adopt that approach? Or, how could you be sure that the idea is unprecedented? Take the game development as an example. It is absolutely okay to innovate and be creative about game genres or design elements in games, since on these topics there are still space to work with, and games should all have new elements so that players don’t get tired. Having a beginners mind on these topics I believe is totally fine. But when it comes to the part of coding and implementing the ideas, there is a certain structure you must stick to. Though there might be variations due to specific needs, the overall structure and patterns should be adhered to. Because before you there are countless precedents in this realm, and they already found the best generally applicable ways (and by “best” here it means quantified using rigorous means) to build software. Not sticking to these rules and methods will only cause you time and energy doing something that is greatly unlikely to be rewarding.

I concur with Kermit’s “conspiracy of craziness” and the subsequent idea of the freedom of thought. To have the audacity to think beyond the conventional is the craziness that Kermit refers to. Had Galileo not advocated for the heliocentric model proposed by Copernicus against the predominant geocentrism of the Catholic Church, would man have ever stepped foot on the distant floating rock that changes every day? Would Rover be looking for signs of life on the dusty red planet? “Suspending disbelief” is where creativity originates. Add to this, the freedom of thought that entertains the premise that what seems impossible is eventually achievable, and we foster creativity. Just as the telescope magnifies the image in the sky, we see a flag standing atop the Moon’s surface, and a Tesla Roadster floats in space while we think of growing plants in Mars.

Since our circles have some elements of a face and lots of patterns, we decided to stitch together a robot and give it a story for the patterns. Its face is made up of multiple layers of steel beams. Its shirt is stitched up from shirts of many football players (hence the numbers). Its arms and legs are bodies of airplanes. It lives in a sentient house with eyes that watch over both the robot and garden.

The part where Kermit talks about being creative resembles living in the swamp, as one first needs to be make a living, reminds me of what my high school sociology teacher taught me:  one reason humans took longer to evolve from hunter-gatherer periods to agricultural periods, compared to the rapid advancements from agricultural periods onward, is that agricultural societies had leisure time. Similarly, creativity requires one to first stay alive (not to worry only about survivorship). If a person is so desperate that he/she is seriously starving to death, then the chances that person could be creative is small. Just like during hunter-gatherer periods, most people were busy chasing after beasts or picking apples with barely any leisure time, whereas in agricultural societies, many people have the leisure, after a working day, of designing an ax or shovel, where creativity possibly plays a role. However, this is not to say that creativity comes with spare time only; it lies inherently in every one of us. Rather, as long as one person, in the current society, is not in some extreme situations, he/she can surely be creative.

As someone with a very short attention span, TED talks are almost always so boring for me and I usually end up getting distracted. Having Kermit the Frog be the speaker is a smart way to make it more interesting. By applying Kermit’s own words to his video, the only reason anyone would decide to make a TED talk with an amphibian for a speaker would be because they thought it would have a positive effect on the audience, which reflects Kermit’s words that creativity is the desire for ridiculous optimism. I also particularly liked being reminded that creativity is not just for the arts but can be applied to almost anything. As a student in STEM, I often feel like there’s not much freedom to express my creativity, but I am once again reminded that creativity stems from the inside and it’s completely up to me to want to be creative, regardless of what others may believe or say. Towards the end, Kermit mentions collaboration of people with different expertise in creativity which further reminds me that as a person in STEM, I should be brave enough to be creative and ask people from different backgrounds and studies for advice when stuck.

I really like how Kermit relates creativity to optimism. This idea that we are creative because we believe that it will lead to something positive is a very nice way to put day-to-day creative pursuits. For example, I wouldn’t try to figure out new ways to pack my luggage without believing that one of those new ways are going to be more effective (i.e., allow me to pack more stuff). It is also true in artsy stuff: I probably wouldn’t continue to work on a random drawing if I didn’t believe that the final result will be something cool to look at.

If you want to check out my stuff: https://aaron-sherwood.com/works.html