Non-practice

One day, a gigantic fire ravages a rainforest.

Distraught, every animal turns and flees from their burning home. Passive spectators walking past the edge of the forest offer their condolences, but nothing more than a passing glance or hollow words of sympathy. After all, it’s not their home being burned.

As the sky turns grey with ash and searing flames tear through the land, one small hummingbird flits to a nearby river that is yet to be touched by the destruction. Relentlessly, the bird flies back and forth from the river to the fire, filling its beak with a tiny drop of water to toss on the leaves of a burning tree.

Noticing the tiny hummingbird’s efforts, a toucan challenges him:

“You’re crazy, Hummingbird! You’ll never be able to put out the fire on your own! Why even bother when it’s so much bigger than you?”

The hummingbird pauses.

“I know”, replies the hummingbird. “But I am doing my part.”

Project Aid & Rescue.

It’s easier to focus on other’s part. To notice their mistakes, errors, and things that are not working out for them.

But it’s much better to do your own part, to focus on yourself to fix your own errors.

You are in control of your life, you can fix your mistakes easily.

Others’ errors? Not so much.

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I recently went to a Vodafone store.

I went around lunch, and only one person was handling clients.

A line formed with quite a few persons.

At some point, a new person came to handle clients.

The last person on the old queue wanted to be the first on the new one.

She was told she should wait in line.

And now the point—she started telling others that there should be more queues, there was not enough staff, etc.

Was she right? Of course, it was a real issue. But it was not on topic.

The real topic was that she wanted to go in front of all the people.

When she started to speak about the secondary issue, she likely refused to admit that there was an issue.

It’s very hard to correct something if you don’t first admit there’s something wrong.

It’s not a pleasant solution – you must admit that you’ve made a mistake, apologize, and start from there.

The lady chose an excellent solution, but the issue will likely be there in the future.

The easy path leads to her happiness only.

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Romania is growing; we are getting some highways, and the general economic level is rising.

The thing is – we could have grown faster (see the Poland “shock therapy”), we could have had more highways, etc.

It’s nice that we are growing, but we don’t know how we could have grown further.

When we evaluate a situation, we don’t know the full consequences.

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Why read books? Why go to theatrical plays? Why attend conferences? – these questions might be silly, but I think there’s a common answer to all of them.

The answer? Even if you can read a book summary, read at your own pace (perhaps faster) a theatrical play, and not attend a long conference, if you do things like these, you might notice things tend to stick.

It’s one thing to quickly go through an article or to have it explained in detail at a conference.

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I’ve been to some concerts in my life.

I think there are two kinds of concerts:

• When the artist is energetic, fun, and especially bold.
• When the artist is just there to do their job.

Even when singing opera, you can be bold and make a show.

But I’ve been disappointed a few times by good voices and little to no energy.

It’s not enough to sing nicely; you need to do extra.

I even remember singers I didn’t especially like before, but I enjoyed their energy.

And, of course, being bold (even a bit over the board) helps.

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Sometimes, some places go out of business.

Before the current Carrefour in Unirea, there was a store with good prices and a great location, but few customers. It was a pleasure buying in there.

There was a restaurant in Gara de Nord București (Bucharest North Station). It served good food at low prices.

I used to organize some events at Journey Pub, which is close to Piața Romană. It was a very fancy location with unfancy prices.

I used to organize events at Alouette, which is in a very central location, but not too many people knew about it.

Cora hypermarket had good quality but high prices. They sold to Carrefour.

I regret some of the brands above, some less so.

It makes you wonder.

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Everyone sings in an orchestra, but the most essential person tends to be the main singer in front of the orchestra.

On the other hand, the orchestra will sound poorly due to a single person.

In a football team, everyone matters.

“If I find fifty righteous people in the city of Sodom, I will spare the whole place for their sake.” (source and full details: Genesis 18 NIV – The Three Visitors – The LORD appeared – Bible Gateway)

One person is essential. Do your job well!

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I think that you need some knowledge of creativity. You need to know, have experiences, and go places (inside your mind or physically).

It might be a myth that people who are not in the habit of exploring things (internal and external) have good creativity.

Sure, if you take 100 persons and compare the top 10 to the other 90, you might find out that some of the group of 90 have better creativity than the first 10.

But, as a general rule, I think you need knowledge.

It’s not enough – just knowledge; there are other skills – you need to trust your instincts, you need the ability to allow your mind to wander, etc. Some people in the 90-group might fit this description.

All-in-all, I think you need knowledge. And, of course, other skills.

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