I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old chant of the sea

As a final project for our unit on poetry, my 8th grade English class was given the assignment to write a poem. Though we were asked to employ a few poetic tools here and there, we were, for the most part, given our creative freedom. I remember spending days toiling over this assignment. Brainstorming, scribbling fragments on napkins, drafting with bold, bright markers, ripping my drafts to shreds, and coming to tears in frustration. The night before it was due, still in search of the "perfect"poem, I penned, what in my opinion, was an unsatisfactory piece of work. 

Monday morning our teacher went around the room collecting papers. When she got to my desk, I distinctly remember putting my poem face down in her pile. Almost as if to signify my disappointment in myself and the work I was turning in. I'm sure at that point, I was more concerned about my grade than anything. 

Later that week, my teacher asked to speak with me after class. Great. She's going to tell me that my poem was awful. I already know it was awful. I'm not a poet. I don't know how to write this stuff. Prepared to apologize and beg for a second chance, I went up to her desk as the rest of my class got to leave the room. Before I could say anything, she started, "I want to talk to you about your poem." "I know, I -." "I think it's beautiful. I am going to submit it to be published in The Norton Teacher's Anthology." The second I heard this news, my take on the poem completely flipped. It was like a light switch. Now that an authority figure, this literary expert, had blessed my poem, I believed it was brilliant. Looking back, I'm disgusted by this attitude. 

I'm currently on a team called New Business Initiatives. Each of the four members on our team is charged with coming up with new convincing ideas, creating a business case for each of them, then, if the opportunity is promising, testing the idea. The business case is all about finding existing data to "prove"that your idea is going to be successful. While this type of thinking is important, when it comes to innovation, it can only go so far. You can't know anything for sure until you experiment with real users.

Back in December, I presented my first case to our leadership team. I imagined that at the end of my presentation, the VP would give me a "Yes"or a "No" on the idea, which in turn would indicate whether my idea was a good one or not. This is not what ended up happening. He instead provided some "thoughts" prefaced with a "Do what you will with this, I'm just one voice." Since then, more and more, our leadership has begun to preach that they are not tollgates, but instead, sounding boards for ideas. We'll hear them say things like: I can't tell the future. I can't tell you if something is going to be a successful idea or not. There's no authority on innovation and creativity. There are best practices, and better ideas, but no sure things.

This morning I read this article on the neuroscience of reading fiction. Though I found the article to be absolutely fascinating, I couldn't help but wonder how the "information overload" age in which we live is affecting the way we experience the world. We need science to force us to enter magical, literary worlds. We let others' past experiences determine whether we will even consider experiencing for ourselves. We are resistant to just trying for trying's sake. We want facts. We want proof. After all, why have a bad experience or run a failed experiment when you can just read about it and prevent it for yourself?

Science is fascinating. Data is informative. But first-hand experience is life. While it's important for us to acknowledge the experts and those who have sailed before us, there's a fine line between letting them inform our decisions and letting them live our lives for us. We might as well explore, experiment, enjoy and experience. After all, as my manager recently remarked, "You can find a study to prove anything."