"Ethan's turkey, or where the box came from that we have to think outside of..."

In his pre-school class, my 4-year old, Ethan, was assigned the task of coloring a drawing of a turkey for Thanksgiving. It's a Montessori pre-school class, and they're supposed to encourage a more natural development of a child's inherent talents -- to allow a child to learn and progress at his or her own pace. Yet they gave him an outline of a two-dimensional turkey and asked him to color within the lines. Hmmm?

Ethan didn't color within the lines. And he used green and red and blue for the turkey's color because he likes green and red. His other classmates (the ones who have already learned how to play the "approval" game) told him he was doing it wrong. Fortunately, Ethan didn't pay attention to his classmates. He wasn't in it for the approval, but just for the fun of creating. He was proud of his turkey, and so was I.

The lined edges of the box around creativity begin to form early, and in innocent ways. Color within the lines. Use only realistic colors. Complete your work in xx minutes (why is creative activity even called work? Why isn't it called play?). Limits, boundaries, deadlines. That's where the box comes from. The approval game reinforces it and holds it all in place.

Ahh, but creativity can't be kept in a box. It's not its nature. True creativity is like life itself. It can't be stopped. It's like a river, it finds a way around the rocks. It's a law of physics like gravity, it's growth and evolution, it's "the force that though the green fuse drives the flower."

So, thinking outside the box is really a matter of forgetting momentarily about the box, about the boundaries, the time constraints, and the budget -- anything that looks or feels like the outline of the turkey. Oh, and forget about the approval game too...if you can. That program is so ingrained in most of us it feels like part of our operating system. Yet, it's really only an extension. It can be turned off. Then restart your system, and look at your project through the eyes of a 4-year old.