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What distinguishes creative people?

By creative people l don't mean only the great painter or poet or musician. I also want to include the creative housewife, teacher, cook, sales manager-anyone who is able to break through habitual routines and invent new solutions to old problem, solutions that strike people with their appropriateness as well as originality, so that they say, "Why didn’t l think of that?"

Creative people, first, are not limited in their thinking to "what everyone knows." "Everyone knows" that trees are green. Creative artists are able to see that in certain lights some trees look blue or purple or yellow. Creative people look at the world with their own eyes, not with the eyes of others. They also know their own feelings better than average people. Most people don't know the answer to the question, "How are you? How do you feel?" The reason why they don't know is that they are so busy feeling what they are supposed to feel that they never get down to examining their own deepest feelings. "How did you like the play?" "Oh，it was a fine play. It was well reviewed in the newspaper." Math authority figures like drama critics and book reviewers telling us what to think and how to feel, many of us are busy fulfilling other people's expectations.

Another characteristic of creative people is that they are able to entertain and play with ideas that average people may regard as silly, mistaken, or downright dangerous. All new ideas sound foolish at first,because they are new. People who are afraid of being disapproved of for having "foolish" ideas will have the satisfaction of having everyone agree with them, but they will never be creative, because creativity means being willing to take a chance.

People who would be creative must be able to endure loneliness-even ridicule. lf they have a great and original idea that others are not yet ready to accept,there will be long periods of loneliness.　There will be times when their friends and relatives think they are crazy, and they'll begin to wonder if they are right.Genuinely creative people, believing in their creation, are able to endure this loneliness−for years if necessary.

Another trait of creative people is idle curiosity. Such people ask questions, read books, and conduct investigations into matters apparently unrelated to their jobs or professions-just for the fun of knowing. It is from these apparently unrelated sources that brilliant ideas often emerge to enrich their own fields of work.

Creativity is the act of bringing something new into the world, whether a symphony, a novel, or an improved layout for a supermarket. It is based first on communication with oneself, then testing that communication with experience and the realities one has to contend with. The result is the highest, most exciting kind of learning.

...Reprint from entrance examination of Kansei-Gakuin University