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Poet Ruth Stone describes her creative inspiration

This June 8, Ruth Stone will turn 94. Author of 13 books of poetry and recognized by just about every literary prize there is, Ruth recently described on YouTube how she actually lost most of the poems that have ever come to her:

“I never felt that I wrote them anyways. I would feel them coming from way off, and then they would come toward me, and if I didn’t catch them they went through me and went on, so I just figured they were part of the universe, and not me.”

In her TED Talk, Author Elizabeth Gilbert (“Eat, Pray, Love”) described creativity as more like a genie than genius, as something that possesses you from the outside and takes hold of you rather than something that you can possibly generate yourself or take credit for.

That the best ideas come in flurries of inspiration and seem like accidents may be a function of how our complex and wonderful brains work. While we are aware of our one focal point of attention at any given moment, billions of parallel connections are still churning. What are they thinking about?

Whether the source of creative ideas is a muse or something equally mysterious that emerges in the neural networks of our brain, what can we do to call our creativity into action and apply it to the very present needs and challenges around us?

Declaring our intentions to ourselves and to others is powerful because it sets in motion the rest of our brain, the part that is out of our current field of view, but which keeps scanning and processing and thinking. That is why the key to innovation is the clear definition of a problem. Once a problem is well defined and focused, ideas may surprise us when we least expect them. We truly may wake up in the middle of the night with a novel idea or even solution.

John F. Kennedy’s challenge to go to the moon was so successful because he defined one clear and unambiguous problem. Though complex and varied in the details of its execution, the moon shot was crystal clear in the statement of the challenge. Everyone could understand the goal. Everyone could visualize it. Many minds could synchronize.

In contrast, the current challenge of climate change is vexing in its ambiguity. Al Gore’s climate crisis challenge in “An Inconvenient Truth” generates in us more stress than inspiration. “All of the above” might be the right answer to the question of what to do, but such a task is hard to lead. We can’t even start to visualize the solution.

With the large and amorphous cloud of problems and challenges in the world today, our brains do not know were to start. On the other hand, when we define and envision a very clear mission, the wheels can turn and the neurons can fire, even when they are not in the focal point of our current and immediate attention.

Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE, one of the most powerful companies in the world, defined his company’s mission as focused on the great sustainability challenges of the century — water, energy, health. For GE, the reason to engage in the great challenges of the century is because the solutions represent the great opportunities of the century.

When it comes to the big challenges of the day, even when the problems are broken down into sub-problems and sub-domains, they are still daunting. They appear to require large institutions and large amounts of capital rather than individual creativity. It appears we need to “boil the ocean” in our attempt to slow it’s warming.

Where can our own individual creativity have an impact, and what intentions can we declare for ourselves as individuals that will rouse our muse to inspire us?

At the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi on January 20 of this year, the World Wildlife Federation director Jean-Paul Jeanrenaud presented the most focused statement of the challenges facing our planet: The people of the earth currently consume resources at a rate that actually requires more than one planet earth – another three planets if everyone consumed resources like developed countries. But we only have one earth, and we need a one-planet strategy.

A one-planet strategy can be translated into a one-community, one-home, one-person strategy–something that we all can ponder.

To muse is to meditate on something. A muse is a guiding spirit and source of inspiration. Amuse is to cause joy and laughter. Ruth Stone’s poetry creates visions of a simpler life in a magical, funny, and beautiful earth. Today, Ruth Stone is my muse.