I once heard a Buddhist monk being interviewed.
The interviewer said, “Is it a ridiculous question to ask you to explain Buddhism?”
The monk said, “Not at all.
If you sit in a chair for 7 minutes, you will feel comfortable and relaxed.
If you sit in the same chair for 7 hours, you will feel very uncomfortable and perhaps even be in pain.
If you sit there for 7 years, you will be in agony, and lose the use of your legs.
If you sit there for 70 years, you will grow old and die.
If you sit there for 700 years, the chair and your bones will turn to dust and blow away as though you never existed.
You see, even if you sit still and do nothing, you cannot resist change and movement.
It is an illusion that you can control anything.”
So what does that mean in our terms?
Well, maybe creativity doesn’t always have to struggle to make things happen.
Sometimes, to be truly creative we just have to go with the flow.
Learn to use what’s there.
Let our audience do the work for us.
That’s pragmatism.
Take the Third World for instance.
Five million little children die every year, because they don’t have clean water to drink.
A charity called ONE WATER decided to do something about it.
They built water pumps in Africa.
These pumps draw fresh water from deep beneath the earth, into storage vessels.
So the local population always has fresh, clean drinking water.
But these are no ordinary water pumps.
They are powered by brightly coloured roundabouts.
The local children are fascinated.
They’ve never seen anything like it, and can’t wait to ride.
They walk miles to play on them.
They are the only playground they have.
So there’s always a queue of eager children.
They get fun and exercise, and clean water.
Because ONE WATER let their audience do the work for them.
When you set the game up right, everybody wins.