Branch-rich and rooted giftedness
What a lovely feeling it is, the experience of flow and engagement. While writing a fictional story for my contribution to ECHA 2022, I feel the inner workings of giftedness.
This fictional story is a puzzle. I need to learn a lot about a great diversity of topics, I am challenged to create a web of connections between these topics. I can explore facts and myths at the same time and work out how to weave these topics and perspectives into a solid story respecting the reader’s suspension of disbelief. My divergent way of thinking has a blast here, an inquisitive nature is a prerequisite, and the inner competition (‘come on, let’s make this work perfectly!’) in this project is boosting my drive.
I imagine myself telling this story on stage and tune into the facial expressions of the listeners, all the while my body is constantly busy collaborating with my mind, working out narratives schemes that more or less fit into the ‘whole’ of the story, that interconnect different story lines, symbols, and the overarching gestalt and morality of the story in an engaging, preferably mesmerizing manner.
At the start of this project, weeks ago, some inner voice told me I had created a challenge too big to manage. But I refrained from listening to that voice as if it were telling me some high-quality truth. It wasn’t and by now the creative process is confirming this – joy is my high-quality truth right now.
As a child, I already loved to do ‘open assignments'. I like to dive right in, once I connect with some intrinsic motivation and feel motivational freedom from other people’s (imagined) standards. I love mastering fluidity, the sensational shaping of a story, the need for imagination and empathy as ‘tools’ of intelligence equally valid as, for example, reasoning. And I love creating images, impressions, emotions and other mental states by working vividly with language. What appears to be a tool of our rational mind is an expression of rich non-rational processes.
‘Don’t be afraid to cross the boundaries between what is real and what is imaginary’, my creative mind tells me, ‘It is actually here that one finds truth on an experiential level’.
It is also here that I find the courage to write new stories for a constantly changing world that is currently experiencing an ecological, existential and cultural crisis. What function does imagination have in this context? Can imagination support our understanding and approach to this harsh unfolding reality? I think it can, it is in our nature as human beings to understand ourselves through stories, through imagination. In this sense, this is (our) reality. So, given this fact, what kind of stories can we learn to tell ourselves, what kind of stories would support seeing the harsh reality of the crisis and acting on it – in other words: perceiving it – differently than many of us have learned so far?
I like this article on multispecies well-being as a source of inspiration for these questions. How does our future look like if many of us would represent other species’ say in this shared time to come?
All these questions boil down to both a branch-rich and rooted form of giftedness:
What do you love to do? During which activities your giftedness feels flowy and vitalized because of a fierce challenge? Do not hold back, dive right in, the splash is refreshing. Or, according to a different kind of story, don’t leave certain potential leaves behind in your search for your higher reality, explore, connect and grow as intensely as you can, as you need to.
All the while you ponder these questions: what is it in our world that you value, what is valuable based on an honest look at (non-)human life, and thus (urgently) demands your attention (that is to say, your ‘gift’)?
Connecting giftedness with real-world challenges, step-by-step, flow-by-flow, life-affirmingly supports (your) spirit.