Going there to see here

There is a sidewalk on my campus that I only use about twice a month. Over the course of almost 10 years, I've observed the changing seasons, the changing students, and the ubiquitous construction.  I've pretty well seen what there is to see on that stretch of sidewalk. Or so I thought.

Last week, I saw the light.  Literally.  In fact, I saw two of them, flanking the entrance to a building.  And I realized that I had seen that light two months and 300 miles away, walking the streets of Memphis and capturing architectural details through the lens of my camera.  Why had I never seen that light in my own backyard?

As I pondered that question, I searched through 200 or so photos of architectural details (light fixtures, molding, brick patterns, ironwork, bridges and more, in true geek fashion) to find the one I remembered.  Memory being what it is, the lights are similar in design and material, though not identical. But had I not taken the photo there, I doubt that I would ever have noticed the light here.

Sometimes we can only see some parts of where we are by returning there from somewhere else. T.S. Eliot captures it best, perhaps, in "Little Gidding" from Four Quartets:

We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

Maybe we should have left it as it was

John Basinger recites Milton's Paradise Lost--the entire 60,000 words--from memory.  He started memorizing the poem when he was 58.  (You can listen here.)  I can't decide what fascinates me more, that he started at 58, that he was able to memorize Milton's entire work (I have trouble with my grocery list), or that he learns something new (what he describes as "a delicious possibility") with each recitation of the 60,000 words.

So, when Newsweek reported (this month) the data demonstrating that creative thinking is declining in America and explained that "those who diligently practice creative activities learn to recruit their brains’ creative networks quicker and better," I wondered again why we've abandoned the rigor that shored up innovation.  Some of the highlights:

• A recent IBM poll of 1,500 CEOs identified creativity as the No. 1 “leadership competency” of the future.
• When scholars gave creativity tasks to both engineering majors and music majors, their scores laid down on an identical spectrum, with the same high averages and standard deviations. 
• A lifetime of consistent habits gradually changes the neurological pattern.

And the last quote reminded me that I've written before about Proust and neural networks and the possibilities for change--change at a fundamental, personal, neurological level.  We can alter our own realities (we can debate the limits another time), far later in life than previously thought and far more rigorously in the service of creativity, education, and innovation.  The education of our grandparents and great-grandparents was largely rote memorization, which has been widely vilified in favor of more open-ended instruction.  Rigor and creativity are inextricably confounded; why do we persist in attempts to separate them academically?