Vikas Gupta wonders why the creative graph of Indians decline with age and the possible solutions
Shiva Tangella a 41 years old financial advisor completed an innovative course in Gerontology (study of interdisciplinary practice with older adults) from Tata institute of social sciences in Mumbai. He said, “ This course have helped me personally in understanding my parents and professionally by helping me better understand the needs for the future for my clients. This new perspective has also given me courage in starting my own old age retirement home, thereby giving me a new career direction” This begs the question, as we get older, do we loose our creative juice? Why are most business ideas come to us when we are in our 20s and very few in 40s? What stops us?
So what goes wrong over the years. According to Amrita Prakash an actor and director of short films,” I think we lose our sense of imagination, because society and education that only encourages a structured way of thinking kills our imaginations. The most creative people in my office are 19 year olds” This statement finds weight in our everyday life too. For example, most of the top companies were created by founders in their early 20’s or even teens like Google, Dell, Flipkart, Alibaba, Facebook and so on.
According to Uttara Mone, principal from Rachna Sansad school of Music,” In six years around 600 students have graduated most of which are adults, and our purpose was to address the unfulfilled desires that people could not fulfill in while planning their job, finance, family and so on. Most times, adults are either engrossed or over-comforted in their daily chores that they are not able to take courage to pursue their unfulfilled aspirations. Also many times the social obligation pulls the adult back to their routine”.
We can surely say that youngsters are more creative as they have more time at hand, less responsibilities, wider horizon and social group and physically more strong to run around.
Nonetheless, being an innovative adult has its perks too like mental stability, practicality and experience. One would be surprised to see the benefits of such combination. For example, Dr Subhash Marliwal, who completed a singing course in Rachna Sansad now combines singing in his medical lectures to keep the audience entertained than just black and white information exchange.
How can we even start to identify our next endeavor? For starters it is advisable to start a new hobby skill over the weekends or after work. Or take a resolution to take up one creative activity in a year that you haven’t learnt before. According to Cara D’Souza a student from center for lifelong learning, TISS, “There are many individuals at 40, who want to come out the corporate world, we have to make arenas for them. There is lack of infrastructure for adult learners. I also believe that Mumbai University must have a center for lifelong learning”
Here are few take-ups: writing/ scripting, Painting, interior designing, making your own house, musical instrument, pottery, animation, travelling/backpacking, making a bucket list, learning a new language, inventing a new game, making a website/app, cooking, sculpturing, designing your own clothes, making a short movie.
A step further to find a vacuum of time to reboot your life requires Sabbaticals (longer vacation like a year) – While a new concept in India, sabbaticals are gaining more acceptability for big picture thinking. Even In bible, God tells that six years you shall sow your fields, but during the seventh year the land shall have Sabbath rest. This helps in restoration and rejuvenation thereby higher quality yields in the long term.
In fact large corporations actually encourage time gap and innovation. For e.g. Google encouraged employees to dedicate 20% time to innovation which gave the world Gmail and ad sense. Also Microsoft’s think week every six months uses seclusion to ponder the future of technology. In the same way, it is famously advocated that instead of living 25years (education): 40 years (work), we must do 22 years (education): 7 years (work): 1 year study: 7 years (work): 1year: 7 years….. and so on.
People born in the 1970s or so were preoccupied in satisfying their basic needs with limited economic growth and large families and shoulder hurting responsibilities. As India progresses and we move up the economic ladder, the same people have slowly move beyond satisfying our basic needs to wanting to fulfill our forgotten desires
