In all of the serious aspects of our lives, do we really remember the powerful relationship between creative play… and thinking?

Problem solving comes from exploration.  If the silly ideas of the ‘impossible’ are ignored, passed over and closed down in our children, they will stop thinking creatively.  They become embarrassed by failure, when in reality, failure is how we learn.  Failure is how we learned to walk – we stumbled through it. It’s how we learned to ride a bike – we fell over and skinned our knees. Failure is how we become intelligent… otherwise, how would we recognize success?   In today’s success-driven world, failure is often perceived and treated with negative connotation.

Thomas Edison failed many, many, many times before developing a successful light bulb. But each time he failed, he embraced it as an opportunity to learn again… only, the next time, with more knowledge.  He did not hide behind his embarrassment, or shy away or quit.  He persevered.  He did what we all should strive to do.

However, I wonder what would have happened if Mr. Edison had been graded by an instructor over that period of time of epic failure and had received a failing grade for each failed attempt.  Would he have passed his ‘light bulb development’ class?  Would the final result of the light bulb make up for all of the failed attempts? Or since he already had 52 failing grades, should he have quit since it was obvious he would never pass the class, since the successful attempt would only account for one grade and definitely not enough to raise his grade to a passing one.  What if the course was over before he had the en’light’ened epiphany?  Or…  would he have continued his explorations – putting aside the grade or what others thought about his failures – for the sheer love and passion of solving the challenge?

Failure is an opportunity to begin again… and learn again… only this time… more intelligently.

Learning is a mystery.  One day, knowledge of a certain topic is unknown and does not exist… and then on the next… it appears.  The brain is a malleable organ.  It is capable of growing and stretching as far as we challenge it to do so.  So how do we keep it open?  Keep it playing.  Keep it thinking.  If we ask the right questions… the results are wonder(ful).

~Carol